Forward

The great Soviet people has every reason to be proud of the way the
woman question has been solved in the U.S.S.R. For centuries the
position of women in Europe, Asia, America and Africa has been one of
dependence and subordination. Under capitalism the lot of working women
is rendered still worse by ruthless exploitation in factories and
mills, the joy of motherhood darkened by poverty more than ever before,
increased child mortality and increased prostitution.

The ruling classes of capitalist countries and their hired agents
exalt bourgeois so-called “democracy” to the skies. But the fact
remains that under capitalism the great majority of women are inhumanly
exploited and they suffer from numerous disabilities, from restrictions
of their rights in public and political life, from degrading marriage
and divorce laws which place women in a humiliating and inferior
position to men, from economic dependence and household drudgery.

Marxism-Leninism, which has become the banner of liberation for
millions of working people the world over, pointed out the correct way
to solve the woman question. Lenin and Stalin led the working men and
women of our country to victory over stardom and capitalism.

In the fire of relentless battles fought by the working class under
the leadership of the great Party of Lenin and Stalin, the first
Socialist State in the world was born.

Under the wise leadership of the Bolshevik Party the Soviet people
travelled a glorious and heroic path, in the course of which they have
done away with capitalism and have built up Socialism in our country.

From the backward country it used to be, our Motherland has become
transformed into a mighty industrial and collective-farm power, the
home of the most progressive culture in the world, a model of true
democracy, an impregnable stronghold of Socialism.

The great achievements which the Soviet system brought the working people have radically altered the position of women.

The Soviet system abolished all legal restrictions imposed upon
women and granted them equal rights with men in all fields of
government, economic, cultural and public and political life. Women
became free and economically independent. The Bolshevik Party elevated
women – workers and mothers – and awakened the great creative power
latent in them.

“In Soviet times a new generation has grown up and is beginning to spread its eagle wings.

“It must be admitted that one of the greatest achievements of our
revolution is the new spiritual make-up, the intellectual growth of our
people, as Soviet patriots. This is true of all Soviet people, in town
and in countryside, of those engaged in physical labour and those
engaged in mental labour. That is, indeed, a supreme achievement of the
October Revolution, an achievement of epochal significance.

“The Soviet people are not what they were thirty years ago.” (V. M. Molotov.)

These words fully apply to Soviet women.

Masters of the country on a footing of equality, women, along with
men, built the majestic edifice of Socialism, and in the years of trial
during the war they defended the honour and independence of their
country. They contributed their full share to the historic victory over
fascist Germany and imperialist Japan. And today they give all their
strength and knowledge to the work of fulfilling and exceeding the
post-war Stalin five-year plan, to the work of building Communism in
the U.S.S.R.

The share of Soviet women in the world-historic victories of
Socialism in the U.S.S.R. is enormous. They are a great force in Soviet
society, active participants in the political, economic and cultural
life of our country.

Women’s high position in Soviet society, the position they have won
under the leadership of the Party of Lenin and Stalin, has placed them,
together with the rest of the Soviet people, in the vanguard of the
progressive forces of mankind.

Soviet women deservedly enjoy the respect of all freedom-loving
peoples who perceive in them a powerful force in the fight against
reaction and war-mongers, for a lasting and stable peace, for democracy
and for the great progress of all mankind.

The successful solution of the woman question in the U.S.S.R. is
eloquent, irrefutable evidence of the advantages of the Soviet social
and state system over capitalism; it shows that only the path of Lenin
and Stalin, the glorious path to Communism, leads to freedom and
happiness for the people, to freedom and happiness for mankind.

I. The October Revolution Brought Working Women Freedom and Happiness

Ever since the dawn of history, when private ownership of the means
of production first appeared, women’s position in society has been an
inferior one. Engels traces women’s dependent position to the rise of
class society, which at the various stages of its development produced
various forms of inequality and social disabilities. The first class
antagonism which appeared in history, he wrote, coincided with the
development of the antagonism between man and woman in individual
marriage, and the first class oppression with that of the female sex by
the male. Women of the exploited classes, besides being degraded and
kept in an inferior position to men, shared the hard lot of their class
– first as slaves, then as serfs and lastly as proletarians obliged to
sell their labour power to the capitalist.

From the slave societies of ancient times through to present-day
capitalism the ideologists of the ruling classes have always argued, in
accordance with the interests of the exploiters, that the existing form
of exploitation and the existing order are “just,” “wise” and
“natural.” They have spoken of “immutable laws of nature,” which, they
have asserted, destine some to be rich and rule, and others to be poor
and be ruled. The same arguments are used to justify the inequality and
subjugation of nations. The exploiters have always found it convenient
to claim that “nature” justifies exploitation.

All through the history of class society the shameful attitude
towards women as inferior beings, inherently incapable of attaining the
intellectual level of men, has prevailed. For two thousand years, wrote
Maxim Gorky, the church and the state have instilled into women the
belief that she is second-rate, and this idea prevailed, poisoning the
minds of people. Women were treated as perpetual minors.

The ideologists of the ruling classes have filled innumerable
volumes in the attempt to prove man’s “right” to rule over woman, to
justify the subordinated and degrading position of women, to implant in
women the false idea of the deficiency of their sex and the slavish
psychology that this idea engenders. The champions of the reactionary
bourgeoisie cynically assert that nature itself created woman inferior
to man, made her subordinate to man, unfit for public activities, her
interests confined to the family, the kitchen and the church.

Lenin summed up the position of women in capitalist countries in the
following words: “It is the business of the bourgeoisie to promote
trusts, to herd women and children in factories, to torture them there,
to corrupt them, to condemn them to extreme poverty.”1

* * *

Hard and devoid of hope was the life of women in tsarist Russia. For
the post-revolutionary generation of Soviet people, who have not known
the yoke of the tsarist autocracy and life under the bourgeoisie and
the landlords, fully to appreciate the freedom and equality women enjoy
in our country today, they must be told about women’s hard lot in the
past. The equality of women was won by our people in battle and in
labour under the leadership of the Communist Party. The girls of the
Soviet Union, said Maxim Gorky, can realize and appreciate all that the
Bolshevik Party has achieved in the struggle to better the conditions
of the people, only if they know about the hard lives their mothers and
grandmothers led.

Especially hard were the conditions of women factory workers and
farm labourers in tsarist Russia. In Russia, as in other countries of
Europe, America and Asia, the increasing use of machinery reduced the
need for big muscular strength in the factories. The capitalists were
not slow to take advantage of this fact and began to employ women and
children in large numbers, exploiting them most ruthlessly, forcing
them to accept lower pay than men for the same work, and employing them
on the least skilled jobs.

However, this influx of women into industry did not improve the
well-being of the worker’s family, for according to the law of value
operating under capitalism the value of labour power is determined by
the minimum required to keep the worker and his family alive.
Therefore, the more women the capitalists employed the more they
lowered the wages of men workers.

There were no laws to protect the labour of women and children, not
even elementary provisions for mother and child welfare. Women and
children worked 13-15 hours a day. This system of appalling
exploitation reduced the woman worker to the status of a mere slave.
Chronic unemployment and starvation, inevitable under capitalism, bred
prostitution, which often involved even children.

In tsarist Russia the wages of a man working in a factory were not
sufficient to pay for the bare subsistence of his family. The wages of
women workers, according to data compiled by Professor I. Yanzhul, well
known in his day, averaged about one-half of what was paid to men.
Svyatlovsky, a factory inspector in the Kharkov area, reported that the
average wage of a woman worker was 71/2 rubles, of a man – 141/2.

The capitalist thought only of their profits, and flagrantly
disregarded the most elementary requirements of women workers. There
was no maternity leave, nor were nursing mothers given time off to
nurse their infants. Capitalist methods of production rapidly ruined
the health of working women, and this had a disastrous effect on the
physical condition and development of their children. The barbarous
conditions under which millions of working women lived resulted in an
abnormally high death rate among children.

“How inhumanly working mothers were treated in tsarist Russia!”
wrote Leningrad working women in a letter to Comrade Stalin. “If a
woman became pregnant she was driven from the factory. Working women
therefore concealed their pregnancy, tortured themselves until they
were driven mad with pain, and frequently gave birth right in the shop.
Immediately after childbirth the women would have to go back to work...
what can be more terrible than a mother not wanting her child, and
there were any number of working women who cursed their children.”

As a rule working women received no medical assistance at childbirth.

The condition of peasant women in old Russia was no better than that
of the working women of the cities. A peasant woman had no right to own
land. This alone was sufficient to deprive her of all rights and place
her in a position of subservience in the village and in her home. She
knew neither rest nor respite. Her back was ever bent in hard work for
the landlord and the kulak, in the fields, in the house and in the
barnyard.

An especially profound and vivid description of the condition of the
peasant woman before the revolution has been given by Joseph Stalin:

“Indeed, just stop and think, what was the status of women formerly,
in the old times. Before a woman was married she was regarded, so to
speak, as the lowest among the toilers. She worked for her father,
worked without respite, and still her father reproached her, saying: ‘I
feed you’. After she was married, she worked for her husband, doing
what her husband compelled her to do, and he too reproached her with
the same words: ‘I feed you.’ The woman was the lowest among the
toilers in the village.”2

The following contract, which the women employed on the estate of
Count Potocki had to sign, provides a graphic illustration of the
unbridled power of the landlords and the system of inhuman exploitation
of women farm labourers.

I, a peasant woman from the village... of my own free will, contract
to work on the estate of Count Potocki for a period of 144 working
days, without broad, doing any kind of farm work I am told to do, for a
wage of 34 rubles for the whole time. I have received an advance of 10
rubles, the remainder to be paid to me later, in accordance with what I
shall have earned. I agree:

1). To work from sunrise to sunset.
2). If I leave work without lawful excuse I will refund double the advance and forfeit my wage for the work done.
3). I undertake to report for work whenever I am summoned.
4). If summoned to work on a Sunday or a holiday I have no right to refuse.
5). If I leave the estate without permission on a holiday or on a weekday I must work off the time.
6). If I get sick or die my family must work for the agreed period in my stead.
7). Under no circumstances may I leave my work before this contract expires.

I am aware of the above conditions and sign my name thereto.”

This outrageous contract bound the labourer even after death.

The few paltry laws protecting female labour, enacted after a
stubborn struggle, were not observed at all whenever a lull in the
labour movement set in.

The inhuman capitalist exploitation of women in tsarist Russia was
further aggravated by the survivals of feudalism in the country’s
economy, in the home and in the social and political organization.
Women were denied electoral rights. They were excluded from political
life. The tsarist civil service regulations banned women from “clerical
or other positions in all government and public officers in which
positions are filled by appointment or by election.”

The laws defining matrimonial rights and duties were most
humiliating to the women. “The wife’s duty is to obey her husband, who
is the head of the family,” reads Article 107, Volume X of the Code of
Laws of the Empire of Russia, “to love and respect him, to submit to
him in everything, to minister to his needs in every way and to show
him every mark of attachment, for he is master in the home.” “The wife
is in duty bound to comply above all with her husband’s wishes. If the
husband changes his place of residence the wife is obliged to follow
him.” “A woman may not seek employment without the permission of her
husband.” These are all statutes of the tsarist code.

A married woman did not have her own passport but was registered in
the passport of her husband. She had no right to dispose of her
property. All this made women still further dependent on men.

As a rule, tsarist laws did not permit women to act as guardians of
minors. Guardians were often appointed for children even while their
mothers were alive. Girls were in the complete power of their
guardians, who had full control over their property until marriage. It
often happened that a guardian, unwilling to lose the income from the
property of his ward, would refuse to allow her to marry.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin scathingly described marriage and family law
in tsarist Russia as extremely odious, base and hypocritical.

Among the papers of an old Ryazan physician which are now in the
town archives there is a description typical of the condition of
children in pre-revolutionary Russia.

“Yesterday I was called to some sick children on Kasimovka Street.
The oldest girl, Zina, seven, has the grippe. Lyuba, age five, and
Liza, two, have the whooping cough. A five-month-old baby is sick too.
The oldest boy, Kolya, age eight, lives with a relative, because there
are too many mouths to feed at home. The father, a typesetter, died a
month ago. The family has no means of support whatsoever. The mother,
who used to be a village schoolteacher, cannot find any suitable work.
The temperature in the house is no more than 80. They don’t heat the
stove – there is only enough wood to last till tomorrow. The children
shiver with cold, cough all the time and ask for food.”

Capitalist oppression of women in industry, the hard lot of the
peasant woman who owned no land, the inferior position of women in
society, their subservient status in the home combined to make women in
pre-revolutionary Russia culturally backward and bowed down. Only 13%
of the women in pre-revolutionary Russia had the opportunity of gaining
an education, and these were chiefly from families of the privileged,
wealthy sections of the population – the nobility, bourgeoisie,
government officials and the clergy. Almost all working and peasant
women were illiterate.

The condition of Russian women was wretched, but that of the women
of the non-Russian nationalities in outlying regions of tsarist Russia
was truly appalling. To the national-colonial oppression of tsarism and
the yoke of the Russian bourgeoisie and the native landlords were added
the traditions of feudalism, slavery and patriarchy which were strong
in the Eastern colonial regions of old Russia. Women were kept in
seclusion, and had to wear the horsehair veil in public. Polygamy, the
marriage of minors and the sale of small girls as “brides” were common
practices. This backwardness was not only the result of the history of
the East, but was due also to tsarism’s brutal national policy.

The Uzbek, Turkmenian, Tajik, Kazakh, Azerbaijan women, as well as
the women of all the other nationalities oppressed by tsarism, were
beings without any rights, mere chattel at the disposal of their
masters. Illiterate, locked in the house of father or husband who had
the power of life and death over them, they led a miserable existence.
“Many were the tears that watered the lands of Bokhara,” says a letter
written by working women of Central Asia to the women of Transcaucasia.
“Those tears, shed all through life, from birth to death, can never be
forgotten.... In the Bokhara of the Emirs a woman had five masters: her
first master was God, her second master was the Emir, her third master
was her employer, the man who owned the land and the water, her fourth
master was the mullah and her fifth – her husband. We were sold for
money, for rice, exchanged for all sorts of commodities; while still
children we were given away in marriage to old men who already had
several wives. We were the slaves of our husbands.”

In terse, official language, documents preserved in our state
archives paint a shocking picture of the attitude to women and children
in the outlying regions of tsarist Russia. Here, for example, is a
statement submitted to the town court of Kuba (Azerbaijan) by a
resident of a nearby village, Nagy Karbimar Nur Ali ogly: “Concerning
my serf and her four small children, namely: Naringyul, her daughters
Gaibat and Saibat, her sons Karchagi and Fatulla; these five peasants I
have voluntarily sold to Lieutenant Mahmed-Hanbek, resident of Kuba,
for 500 rubles in silver, and therefore he, Mahmed-Hanbek, has the
right to the possession of the above-mentioned peasants.”

Right up to the Great October Socialist Revolution and the
establishment of Soviet government in these regions the women of the
non-Russian border districts were mere slaves. Their whole world lay
within the narrow confines of the family; their fathers and husbands
had unrestricted power over them.

* * *

Despite their subordinate position and the shameful attitude of the
exploiters towards them, women furnished many an example of patriotism,
courage and pluck in the struggle for freedom and progress even under
the conditions of class inequality. While, on the one hand, the
medieval Domostrois3
recommended that women be kept under rigorous restraint, Russian
folk-epics extolled the deeds of courageous women whose bravery was
equal to that of the heroes of old. Vasilisa Kozhina and Nadezhda
Durova covered themselves with glory in the Patriotic War of 1812. Even
in the backward East, Tutibikeh, the wife of a progressive Azerbaijan
statesman, Fatali-khan of Kuba, directed the defence of the fortress of
Derbent in the eighteenth century.

The degrading, subservient position of women in tsarist Russia could
not but evoke protests on the part of the progressive section of
Russian society. Many a stirring page in the works of the foremost
representatives of advanced social thought in Russia – Herzen,
Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky – was dedicated to the struggle
against the oppression of women. Belinsky vehemently denounced the
ruling classes: “Your attitude towards women,” he wrote, “is purely
utilitarian, almost commercial. All she is to you is capital plus
interest, a village, a house with an income; lacking that, she is a
cook, laundress, nurse; at best an odalisque.” A. I. Herzen wrote that
a “world of universal interest” is open to a man – work, public
activities, art – but a woman’s world is confined to the family and to
housework. “The poor woman has nothing but her family life... her world
is limited to the bedroom and the kitchen. It is a strange thing –
nineteen centuries of Christianity have not succeeded in teaching
regard for woman as a person. One would think it much more difficult to
comprehend that the earth revolves around the sun, yet after some
argument about it the matter was settled; but that a woman is a human
being just doesn’t seem to penetrate the mind.”

A. N. Dobrolyubov pointed out that the spiritual and economic
enslavement of women was the result of the entire system of relations
in contemporary society. Like all the finest, most progressive people
of those times, he voiced his angry protest against the enslavement of
women; he regarded this enslavement as a characteristic feature of a
society based upon the supremacy of one person over another, of the
husband over the wife, of man over woman.

N. G. Chernyshevsky, one of the greatest Russian revolutionary
democrats, declared that when man recognized the equality of woman he
would cease to regard her as his property. Many pages of his novel What Is To Be Done? Deal with the means of achieving economic and intellectual independence for women.

The ideas of Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky were like a shining
beacon to the democrats and enlighteners of the peoples of
Transcaucasia, Central Asia, the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The fight
against the autocracy and serfdom was the common cause of the Russian
progressives and the foremost representatives of the non-Russian
nationalities. In the nineteenth century they were drawn closer
together, ideologically and politically, in what amounted to a united
front. And it was the influence of the great Russian thinkers that led
M.F. Akhundov, one of the most outstanding nineteenth-century
enlighteners in the East, to voice his impassioned protest against the
slavery in which Mohammedan women were held.

However, these representatives of progressive Russian social thought
in the last century could not fully fathom the causes of the
subjugation of women and were, therefore, unable to point out the road
mankind must follow in order to achieve the emancipation of women.

Only revolutionary Marxism, only the Party of Lenin and Stalin could
solve this problem both in theory and in practice. It was solved on the
basis of the truly scientific principles that “where there are
landlords, capitalist, merchants there can be no equality between men
and women, even in law.”4

Equality for women can be ensured only by a fundamental change in
the social relationships of the old bourgeois-landlord world.

Leninism-absorbed all the best traditions of the Russian
revolutionary democrats of the nineteenth century, but freed them of
the imperfections due to the historical conditions, laid bare the true
causes of the inferior position of women in society and showed women
the way to emancipation. Leninism exposed the lies of the scientific
flunkeys who deliberately slandered women, attributing their unequal
position to “nature” and asserting that women “always” have been and
always will be inferior.” Leninism showed that the inequality and
oppression of women is rooted in class inequality and caused by the
system of private property and the exploitation of man by man.

Marxism, according to Stalin’s definition, is the scientific
expression of the fundamental interests of the working class. The
Utopian Socialists based their theories on a feeling of sympathy for
the sufferings of the working class. Marxism-Leninism, which is the
most humane of all social theories that ever existed, rose much above
mere sympathy for the sufferings of the workers. It discovered the laws
of social development and on this basis revealed in all its grandeur
the mission of the proletariat as the class destined by history to head
the movement for social progress and for the emancipation of all
mankind. That is why only the founders of scientific Communism were
able to point out how to achieve real equality for women.
Marxism-Leninism proved that sympathy and pity alone for women would
never gain this goal, which can only be achieved by women joining the
struggle of the working class for Socialism, for the overthrow of the
social system based on class inequality, on the exploitation of man by
man.

Revolutionary Marxism closely links the fight for the emancipation
of women with the general fight of the proletariat for its liberation,
for the abolition of class society and for the victory of Communism.

From the very beginning of the Russian revolutionary working-class
movement the most courageous and class-conscious women from among the
workers and the intelligentsia joined the ranks of the Bolshevik Party.
Any number of historical facts refute beyond question the reactionary
theory that nature has fitted women for certain vocations only and that
they are incapable of taking part in creative, public and government
activities. Women have always taken an active part in the great
movements for liberation in history and have contributed greatly to
historical progress.

“There has not been a single great movement of the oppressed in
history in which working women have not played a part. Working women,
who are the most oppressed of all the oppressed, have never stood
aloof, and could not stand aloof, from the great march of emancipation.
We know that the movement for the emancipation of the slaves had its
hundreds and thousands of women martyrs and heroines. Tens of thousands
of working women took their place in the ranks of the fighters for the
emancipation of the serfs. And it is not surprising that the
revolutionary movement of the working class, the most powerful of all
the emancipatory movements of the oppressed masses, has attracted
millions of working women to its standard.”5

Since its establishment the Bolshevik Party has consistently
followed Lenin’s precept that working women and peasant women must be
taught to fight together with their brothers and husbands against
tsarism and capitalism in order to achieve their full emancipation.

The Party of Lenin and Stalin, intimately bound up with the people,
not merely in word but in deed, was the only party that persistently
demanded full economic and political equality for women. No other party
fought so resolutely and boldly against the enslavement of women as did
the Bolshevik Party. As far back as in 1903, at the Second Congress of
the R.S.D.L.P., demands for the franchise for women, for the protection
of female labour and of working mothers and their infants were included
in the Party program.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin pointed out that the experience of all
emancipation movements shows that the success of a revolution depends
on the extent to which women participate in it.

Lenin and Stalin taught that only a movement in which working women
– factory hands and peasants – participate is a truly mass movement.
They therefore attached great importance to the task of organizing
women, of rallying them around the Bolshevik Party and of enlisting
their participation in the fight for the abolition of the system of
exploitation. It was a difficult task, because women were then the most
backward section of the working population, the most inexperienced in
the political respect, and it was they that had to be enlisted in the
greatest emancipatory movement in history, that of the proletariat led
by the Communist Party.

Prompted by their own class interests, the capitalist exploiters
made various attempts to arrive at a bourgeois “solution” of the woman
question. Bourgeois political parties strove to isolate the struggle of
working women from the class struggle of the proletariat as a whole, to
lure proletarian and peasant women away from the class struggle with
flowery talk about “women’s common cause” and bourgeois-feminist
illusions divorced from the underlying facts of social life. One of the
harmful illusions which the movement known as feminism sought to spread
was that women could attain equal rights with men without fighting for
a radical, progressive change in the social system. The bourgeois
feminists tried hard to make working women blind supporters of
capitalism and of the imperialists’ colonial policy, to convert them
into a women’s guard of capitalism.

By isolating the women’s movement from the fight for social progress
the bourgeoisie aimed to weaken women’s efforts in the fight for
freedom. The bourgeois feminists flaunted the flag of purely feminine
interests and made a great deal of noise about political rights for
women and about their right to education, ignoring the fact that for
millions of women these rights, under capitalism, have no real meaning.
At the Fifth International Assembly to Combat Prostitution one of the
suffragette ladies expressed her admiration for the police surveillance
over “fallen” women, “but all she had to say about raising the wages of
working women was that they do not deserve better wages.”6

The leaders of the bourgeois-feminist movement distracted the
attention of women from their chief enemy, the capitalists and the
landowners. They insisted that not the exploiters but men in general
are responsible for women’s subservient position. The bourgeoisie never
could, nor can it, solve the woman question, for its rule is based on
social inequality and class oppression. Even in a period of
revolutionary upsurge in France in 1792, the bourgeois Convention
opposed equal rights for women.

The Bolshevik Party’s struggle against bourgeois feminism was a
struggle to free women from the influence of the bourgeoisie, to reveal
the harmfulness of bourgeois-feminist ideas and illusions, to expose
the efforts of the bourgeois-feminist organizations to keep the working
women out of the class war waged by the proletariat.

The Bolshevik Party surmounted all difficulties. Under its
leadership the working women of Russia organized in ever-increasing
number and joined in the class struggle, in the struggle to overthrow
the rule of the landowners and capitalists.

Women took an active part in many “riots” and strikes, as, for
instance, at the Krenholm Textile Mills in 1872, in Orekhovo-Zuyevo and
at the Yaroslavl Textile Mills in1885, in numerous strikes in St.
Petersburg and in other Russian cities. In those years and in the years
that followed women were very active in strikes, and in the mills where
female labour was widely employed they frequently took the lead in the
struggle.

Marfa Yakovleva, a working girl, played a prominent part in the
famous strike at the Obukhov munitions plant in St. Petersburg in 1901.
She fought fearlessly on the barricades, was arrested and put on trial.
Lenin wrote in an article entitled “Penal Servitude Rules and a Penal
Servitude Sentence”: “The memory of our heroic comrades killed and
tortured in prison will multiply the number of new fighters tenfold and
bring to their assistance thousands, who, like 18-year-old Marfa
Yakovleva, will say openly: ‘We stand by our brothers!’ ”7

The Bolsheviks succeeded in organizing the women and in training
many of them to become excellent revolutionary fighters against tsarism
and capitalism. In this way a working-class women’s movement developed
in Russia.

The results of the Party’s work in drawing women factory workers and
peasants into the revolutionary movement were fully evident in the
revolution of 1905. Many women joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks and
took an active part in strikes and demonstrations, conducted agitation
and propaganda among workers in factories and mills and among peasants
in the countryside, helped conceal and distribute illegal literature.

Klavdia Ivanovna Kirsanova joined the Bolshevik Party at the age of
sixteen, just before the revolution of 1905. For 43 years she was a
fiery propagator of the ideas of Lenin and Stalin, a staunch,
courageous fighter for the emancipation of the working people, for the
cause of Communism.

In 1907 Klavdia Kirsanova was imprisoned, but this did not break her
spirit. When she was released she worked in the military department of
the Bolshevik Party and fearlessly spread Bolshevik ideas among the
troops. In 1908 she was arrested again and confined in a fortress.
Immediately upon her release she resumed activities in the underground
movement. After her third arrest she was exiled to Siberia for life,
but soon escaped and continued her work in underground Bolshevik
organizations. Again she was arrested. Four years of prison and four
years of exile steeled the will of this splendid daughter of the
Bolshevik Party. After the victory of the Great October Socialist
Revolution Klavdia Kirsanova was appointed to responsible positions in
Soviet bodies and in the Party; during the Civil War she joined the
ranks of the Red Army. For many years she held leading positions in
Party educational institutions and was a lecturer for the Central
Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.). During the Patriotic War Kirsanova
devoted all her knowledge and strength to the effort to defeat the
enemy. Her fiery speeches inspired Soviet people in the rear and at the
front to perform heroic deeds in labour and in battle.

Klavdia Kirsanova did much to further the organization of an
international women’s movement that would unite democratic women all
over the world in the fight against reaction and the instigators of a
new war. Death, in October 1947, cut short this remarkable life, a life
dedicated to work and struggle for the liberation of the working people
from exploitation, for the victory of Communism.

Klavdia Ivanovna Nikolayeva began to work for a living at a very
early age, while still a child. For several years she worked in
printshops as a folder.

Klavdia Nikolayeva was also very young when she took the path of
revolutionary struggle. In 1909, at the age of 16, she joined the
Bolshevik Party. From that time on Klavdia Nikolayeva was an active
underground worker. The tsarist police arrested her many times. Time
and again she was exiled and imprisoned, but this only steeled her
will. She fought on in exile too. During her exile in the Province of
Vologda she conducted revolutionary propaganda among the working women
of a linen mill.

Only after the February Revolution was Klavdia Nikolayeva able to
return to her native Petrograd. Here the Party delegated her to carry
on organizational work among working women.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution Klavdia Nikolayeva
devoted herself entirely to work among women. She became head of the
women’s department of the Petrograd Provincial Committee and of the
working women’s department of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party.

In acknowledgement of Klavdia Nikolayeva’s selfless work the Soviet Government decorated her with the Order of Lenin.

In 1936 she was elected Secretary of the All-Union Central Council
of Trade Unions. She visited factories and mills, took an interest in
how the workers lived and worked, and with all the passion of a
revolutionary called upon them to redouble their efforts to fulfil the
tasks set by the Party and the Soviet Government.

From the very first days of the Patriotic War Klavdia Nikolayeva was
active in the struggle against the German fascist invaders. She
supervised the training of nurses and medical corps women, fixed up
rest homes and sanatoriums as hospitals and set up a wide network of
children’s homes. She was indefatigable in everything she did. Her
speeches inspired workers on the home front to self-sacrificing effort
for the cause of victory over the enemy.

Klavdia Nikolayeva died in 1944. Death took her at her post, a
member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
and Secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.

In response to the Bolsheviks’ appeal to fight side by side with the
men, working women took part in armed uprisings in various Russian
cities in 1905.

“In the December days,” wrote V. I. Lenin with reference to the
Moscow uprising in December 1905, “the Moscow proletariat taught us
magnificent lessons in the art of ideologically ‘converting’ the
troops,... when two working girls, carrying a red flag in a crowd of
10,000 people, rushed towards the Cossacks and cried: ‘Kill us! We
shall not surrender this flag as long as we are alive.’ And the
Cossacks were disconcerted and galloped away, followed by the shouts of
the crowd: ‘Long live the Cossacks!’ Such instances of courage and
heroism must live forever in the memory of the proletariat.”8

Those were the years when Maria Nikolayevna Kurkina, now on the
staff of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, joined the
revolutionary movement. Maria Kurkina took part in the general strike
of Ivanovo weavers at the age of 18, and from that time on she fought
tsarism and the bourgeoisie, always remaining true to the banner of
Communism.

Led by the Bolshevik Party, proletarian women inaugurated the annual
celebration in Russia of International Women’s Day, which comes on
March 8. The celebration of International Women’s Day wakened the
Russian working women to revolutionary consciousness and played an
important part in rallying their forces.

A resolution passed on March 8, 1913, at a mass meeting of women in
St. Petersburg said: “The proletariat demands that universal suffrage
be extended to working women, in order that they too may participate in
the struggle for the conquest of political power, which is a
prerequisite for the achievement of Socialism.”

Great revolutionary enthusiasm reigned at the International Women’s
Day meetings in 1914, held in an atmosphere of sharpened class
conflicts. The Bolshevik slogans calling for a struggle against
predatory war were the keynote of these meetings. In St. Petersburg
working women held mass demonstrations on March 8. The Bolshevik
newspaper Put Pravdy brought out a special edition with
letters and articles from working women in factories and mills. The
paper pointed out that March 8 was the concern of the entire
proletariat and denounced the Mensheviks who asserted that this day was
merely a women’s holiday and had nothing to do with the class struggle.

In 1915 the Bolsheviks observed International Women’s Day in spite
of rigorous police persecution. An illegal proclamation issued by the
Party and distributed among the working women read:

“Comrades working women!

“On this day we demonstrate our solidarity. Today working women,
breaking their age-old chains of submission, slavery and oppression,
proudly join the ranks of the international proletariat in the fight
against the common enemy – capitalism.

“Working women! The government has sent our sons to be crucified for
capital. So build your organizations, consolidate your ranks in the
factories and workshops, in offices and stores, and let us fling our
first mighty cry into the face of insatiable capital:

“Enough of blood! Enough of war! Let the criminal autocratic government be brought to trial before the whole people!”

Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks working women came out into
the streets with the slogans: “Down with the imperialist war!”, “Send
us our husbands back from the trenches!”, “Bread for our children!”
Soldiers’ wives were among the initiators of the anti-tsarist,
anti-imperialist popular demonstrations.

The militant protest of women against the imperialist war,
starvation and tsardom was an important factor in the revolutionary
struggle against the tsar’s government and against the bourgeoisie. In
1917, on International Women’s Day, February 23 (March 8) “at the call
of the Petrograd Bolshevik Committee, working women came out in the
streets to demonstrate against starvation, war and tsardom. The
Petrograd workers supported the demonstration of the working women by a
city-wide strike movement. The political strike began to grow into a
general political demonstration against the tsarist system.”9

The bourgeois-landlord Provisional Government, set up after the
overthrow of tsarism, was concerned with clearing the road for the
imperialists and continued to wage the imperialist war which was
ruining the country. It was evident that the imperialist bourgeoisie
could not and would not save the country and carry out democratic
reforms.

Rabotnitsa (The Working Woman), a Bolshevik magazine then
published, rallied the masses of women to the fight for the
revolutionary Bolshevik slogans, called upon the women to join trade
unions and the Bolshevik Party, to fight against the imperialist war,
against capitalism, and for the victory of the socialist revolution.

“Freedom and Equality for the Oppressed Sex!” was one of the
immortal slogans of the October Revolution along with “All Power to the
Soviets!”, “Land to the Peasants!”, “Peace to the Nations!”

Rallying around the Bolshevik Party on the eve of the October
Revolution, working women marched in the front ranks of the
revolutionary army of Lenin and Stalin, trained for the battle against
the bourgeoisie, learned to administer first aid and bear arms.

On October 15, 1917, a general meeting of the working women of
Moscow passed a resolution declaring that only a government of the
Soviets could extricate the country from the difficult straits it was
in, bring peace and save the revolution.

During the October uprising working women acted as nurses, managed
the feeding centres of the Red Guards and revolutionary units, and took
a direct part in the fight against the whiteguard Cadets, patrolled the
streets and guarded factories, dug trenches, built barricades and
defended them.

The masses of working women fought actively for the dictatorship of
the proletariat, for the power of the Soviets, both in the period of
preparation for the revolution and during the Great October Socialist
Revolution. Together with the whole working class, under the leadership
of the Bolshevik Party, they trod the difficult and heroic path of
revolutionary struggle which led to the victory of Socialism in our
country and, at the same time, to the establishment of complete
equality for women.

II. Soviet Women – Equal Builders of the Socialist Society

Women begin to take an active part in government and public work

As a result of the victory of the proletarian revolution in the
Soviet Republic “not a trace has been left of the laws that placed
women in a subordinate position.”10

The great charter of the October Revolution, the Declaration of
Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People, heralded the genuine
solution of the woman question. No party ever fought for the
emancipation of women so consistently as the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union did and is doing now. “Not a single state, not even the
most progressive republic, the most progressive democratic, bourgeois
state, has granted women full equality. The Soviet Republic of Russia,
on the other hand, promptly swept away all legislative traces of the inequality of women without exception and at one stroke ensured them full equality before the law,” said V. I. Lenin.11

No sooner was Soviet power established than all civil disabilities
for women were abolished, and the Bolshevik Party set to work to draw
working women and peasant women into the administration of the country.

“We are not utopians,” wrote Lenin just before the October
Revolution. “We know that not every labourer or cook could at present
undertake the administration of the state.... We demand that the
class-conscious workers and soldiers should conduct the training
in the business of state administration, and that this should be begun
immediately, i.e., that all the toilers, all the poor should begin to be trained to this business immediately.”12 Lenin, who had deep faith in the creative powers of the people, wrote: “There is no doubt that there is far more organizing talent among the working women and peasant women than we are aware of, people who are able to organize in a practical way....”13

In a note to J. V. Stalin on State Control, Lenin wrote:

“In my opinion the following should be added to the decree on Control:

2) Require by law the systematic participation of delegates from the
proletarian population, stipulating that up to 2/3 of such delegates
must be women.”14

Lenin repeatedly stressed that it is impossible to build a socialist
society without the most active and extensive participation of women.

Lenin’s ideas were further developed by Stalin. “The working women,”
Stalin said, “the female industrial workers and peasants, constitute
one of the biggest reserves of the working class, a reserve that
represents a good half of the population. Whether this female reserve
goes with the working class or against it will determine the fate of
the proletarian movement, the victory or defeat of the proletarian
revolution, the victory or defeat of the proletarian government. The
first task of the proletariat and of its vanguard, the Communist Party,
therefore is to wage a resolute struggle to wrest women, the women
workers and peasants, from the influence of the bourgeoisie, to
politically educate and to organize the women workers and peasants
under the banner of the proletariat.

“But the working women,” Stalin went on to say, “are something more
than a reserve. They may become and should become – if the working
class pursues a correct policy – a regular army of the working class
operating against the bourgeoisie. To mould the female labour reserve
into an army of women workers and peasants fighting shoulder to
shoulder with the great army of the proletariat – that is the second
and all-important task of the working class.”15

The wisdom and perspicacity of Lenin’s and Stalin’s approach to, and
solution of, the woman question can be fully appreciated now that, with
Socialism victorious in the U.S.S.R. and the country advancing
gradually towards Communism, we see what a great role women have played
and are playing in these achievements.

The Bolsheviks possess a “magic means,” V. I. Lenin wrote, whereby,
with one stroke, they can multiply the strength of the state apparatus
tenfold, a means which no capitalist state has or can have. “This magic
means is to get the toilers, the poor, to share in the day-to-day work
of governing the state.”16

Expounding the principles of the Soviet system, which consist in
providing wide scope for the initiative and activity of the masses,
Lenin repeated time and again that “...it is impossible to draw the
masses into politics without also drawing in the women,”17
for women comprise one-half of the population, and “there can be no
socialist revolution unless a vast section of the working women take
part in it.”18

The working class, guided by the Bolshevik Party, successfully accomplished the tasks Lenin and Stalin set.

The introduction of equal political rights for working women was an
important step towards enlisting the participation of the masses of
women in state activities. Hundreds of thousands of advanced working
women and peasant women became active builders of the new society. The
Bolshevik Party took the lead in the Soviet government’s great effort
to draw women workers and peasants into political activities. In the
autumn of 1918 the “Working Women’s Committees,” which had been set up
by the Party organizations, were supplanted by departments for work
among women – factory workers and peasants. Their function, besides
political education, was to enlist the participation of women in the
practical work of government bodies and trade union and cooperative
organizations.

In November 1918 the First All-Union Congress of Working and Peasant
Women was held in Moscow. Despite the fact that the country was in the
throes of Civil War, 1,147 delegates attended, including delegates
representing government office workers, post and telegraph employees
and domestic servants. Among the questions discussed were: women’s role
in industrial production and in the home, female and child labour, and
the tasks of social education. The resolution adopted at the congress
declared that it was essential for working women to take an active part
in the revolutionary struggle, in all its forms and manifestations.

That congress, as Comrade Stalin wrote, “was a landmark in the work
of our Party among working women. The invaluable service rendered by
that congress consisted in the fact that it laid the foundation for the
organization of political education among the working women and peasant women of our Republic.”19

Questions of work among proletarian and peasant women were discussed
at congresses of the Bolshevik Party along with the major problems on
the solution of which the fate of the Soviet system depended.

The main points on the agenda of the Eighth Party Congress, held in
March 1919, at the height of the Civil War and armed foreign
intervention, were the Party Program, the policy toward the middle
peasants, problems connected with the building up of the Red Army. The
Congress also pointed out the necessity of paying the most serious
attention to work among women. The resolution adopted says:
“Recognizing the pressing necessity of consolidating our forces by
enlisting the participation of working women and peasant women in the
struggle for Communism and in the advancement of the Soviet system, the
Eighth Congress of the Party calls upon all Party Committees to take
practical steps to carry out this task.”20

Another decision concerning work among women was adopted one year
later at the Ninth Party Congress (March 1920), in connection with the
discussion of the immediate tasks confronting the Party and the Soviet
Government. The Eleventh Party Congress, in 1922, stressed the special
importance of enhancing the Party’s political influence among the
broadest possible masses of working women and peasant women under the
new conditions of life in the country. Every effort should be made, the
resolution said, to get women workers to join the trade unions, and
they should be elected to trade union and Soviet government bodies. The
Congress stressed the role peasant women could play in raising
agricultural output and in the development of farm cooperatives. The
Twelfth Party Congress, held one year later, noted “considerable
achievements in the work among women” and pointed out that the Party
should “...increase its efforts to draw working and peasant women into
work of Party, Soviet, trade union and cooperative organizations....”21 The Congress gave special consideration to work among women of the non-Russian nationalities.

A resolution “On Work Among Working and Peasant Women,” drafted by
the Central Committee of the Party in accordance with a decision of the
Thirteenth Party Congress, reads in part: “...the Congress considers it
necessary to call the attention of the whole Party to the fact that the
present extent of participation of working and peasant women in Party,
Soviet, trade union and cooperative development is far from sufficient,
and it is therefore of prime importance for the Party to carryon work
among working women and peasant women. The conservative attitude
towards women, an attitude inherited from capitalist society, must be
combated.

“Our Party organizations should be the first to set an example.

“ ‘The construction of socialist society,’ as Comrade Lenin said,
‘will commence only when we, having achieved the complete equality of
women, take up our new work together with women relieved from petty,
stultifying, unproductive work.’

“It is by unswervingly following this path outlined by the hand of
the great leader that the principles of Leninism will be realized in
the Communist Party’s work among working and peasant women.”22

The Party of Lenin and Stalin attached great importance to the
political education of women as a factor contributing to a really basic
solution of the woman question, and it held that the way to ensure the
political education of women was to get them to participate in the
practical work of all Soviet government bodies. In 1920 Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin wrote in a message to working women during the elections to the
Moscow Soviet:

“What we want is that the working woman should achieve equality with
the working man not only before the law but in actual fact. It is
necessary for this that working women should take an increasing part in
the administration of public enterprises and in the administration of
the state.

“In this way women will learn fast and will catch up with the men.

“Therefore elect more working women to the Soviet, both members of the Communist Party and non-Party women.”23

In 1923, in an article entitled “Fifth Anniversary of the First
Congress of Working Women and Peasant Women,” J. V. Stalin wrote: “Now,
when power is in the hands of the workers and peasants, the political
education of working women is of prime importance.”24

In the same article Stalin emphasized that success in industry and
in the development of agriculture depended to a large extent on the
political awareness and maturity of women, workers and peasants,
working side by side with the men in the factories and in the fields.
He pointed out that:

“Working women and peasant women are free citizens on an equal
footing with men workers and peasants. They vote in the elections to
our Soviets and to the management of our cooperatives. They are
eligible for election to the Soviets and to the management of
cooperatives. The working women and peasant women can improve our
Soviets and cooperatives, strengthen and develop them, if they are
politically educated. The working and peasant women can weaken and
undermine them if they are backward and ignorant.”25

A great part in the work of organizing and politically educating the
working women of town and village was played by some of the glorious
daughters of our people, leading members of the Bolshevik Party who
devoted their lives to the heroic struggle which the Party waged.

Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya is a shining example of a woman
who selflessly served her country and fought for the happiness of the
people. She was a young girl when she joined the revolutionary struggle
– in the days when the Party was just coming into being – and she
devoted all her life to the fight for the Party’s cause, for the
welfare of the people, for Communism.

Almost sixty years ago, in 1890, Nadezhda Krupskaya joined a Marxist
circle in St. Petersburg. In the winter of 1894, Nadezhda Krupskaya,
who was teaching at an evening Sunday school, met Lenin. She remained
the close friend and loyal helpmate of the great founder of the
Bolshevik Party until the last day of his life. In 1895 Lenin united
all the Marxist workers’ circles into a League of Struggle for the
Emancipation of the Working Class, and Krupskaya took an active part in
the work of this League. She was secretary of the editorial board of Iskra, in the days when Lenin was its editor, and later of the Bolshevik paper Vperyod,
both published abroad. Hers was the difficult job of maintaining secret
contacts with the Party organizations in Russia, and she helped in the
preparatory work for the Second and Third Party congresses, in both of
which she took a most active part. In 1905 she was living in Russia,
where, working as secretary of the Central Committee, she took a
leading part in the underground Bolshevik Party work. During the years
of rabid reaction which followed the Revolution of 1905, Krupskaya was
compelled to live abroad. But she maintained close ties with Party
leaders in Russia. She was secretary of the Bolshevik newspaper Proletary,
took an active part in the fight against the opportunist Liquidator and
Otzovist trends, and maintained contact with the Bolshevik Newspaper Pravda (published in Russia) and the Bolshevik group in the Fourth State Duma.

During the imperialist war Nadezhda Krupskaya was very active in the
work of rallying the revolutionary forces for the fight against
imperialism, against defencism, and for turning the imperialist war
into a civil war. She attended the International Women’s Congress in
Berne at which the Russian delegates expounded the Bolshevik position
on the war.

After the revolution of February 1917 Krupskaya, as a Secretary of
the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, conducted extensive
educational work among the working people and explained to working
women and soldiers’ wives the Bolshevik slogans of struggle for a
victorious socialist revolution in Russia.

Krupskaya took part in the work of the Sixth Congress of the
Bolshevik Party, which set the aim of an armed uprising to overthrow
the government of the imperialist bourgeoisie and to transfer power to
the Soviets. She participated in the Great October Socialist Revolution
and defended the Soviet government at the fronts in the Civil War.
After the victory of the Soviet system and until her death Nadezhda
Konstantinovna Krupskaya took an active part in the construction of
Socialism in the U.S.S.R. She was an outstanding leader in the field of
Communist education, a member of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.
(B.) and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the
U.S.S.R.

Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova was born in 1878. Her whole life was
closely bound up with the life and work of her brother, Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin (Ulyanov).

Maria Ilyinichna’s oldest brother, Alexander, was executed on orders
of the tsar’s government in 1887. He had taken an incorrect path of
struggle, the path of individual terrorism. “The path to follow is a
different one,” said Vladimir Ilyich, and it was that different path,
Lenin’s path, that his sister followed.

In those years a working-class movement was just beginning to appear in Russia.

Maria Ulyanova came to St. Petersburg in 1896, at a time when the
working-class revolutionary movement was already making great strides.
After three years of underground work she was arrested and exiled to
Nizhni Novgorod (now Gorky). When her period of banishment was up she
went to Moscow and there flung herself into revolutionary work with
still greater energy. In 1901 she was arrested again, imprisoned and
exiled, this time to Samara (now Kuibyshev), where she continued the
struggle against the autocracy.

After her return from exile in 1904 Ulyanova was so closely watched
by the tsarist police that it was impossible for her to engage in any
revolutionary work in Russia. That year she went abroad to join
Vladimir Ilyich. Maria Ilyinichna helped Lenin in his fight against the
Otzovists and the Conciliators. She translated Marx’s Letters to Kugelmann,
and took a course at the Sorbonne. In 1910 she removed to Saratov but
was soon arrested and expelled to Vologda Province, where she engaged
in revolutionary work among the railwaymen and did her full share to
strengthen the Bolshevik Party organizations.

After the revolution Maria Ulyanova was appointed secretary of the Pravda and not long after was made a member of its editorial board. She became editor of Pravda’s
“Working Women’s Page,” and her articles taught millions of women to
fight persistently for the fulfilment of Lenin’s precepts. Warm-hearted
and alert, she always took a particular interest in problems affecting
working and peasant women.

At the Fourteenth Party Congress Maria Ulyanova was elected to the
Central Control Commission and then to the Presidium of the Central
Control Commission. At the Seventeenth Party Congress she was elected
to the Bureau of the Soviet Control Commission and was put in charge of
the complaints department. In this position Ulyanova fought for the
correct Party line and worked persistently and capably to get all
mistakes and distortions in the activities of Soviet organizations
rectified.

Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova died in 1937. Hers was the noble life of a
staunch Bolshevik, a life of boundless devotion to the cause of the
Party of Lenin and Stalin.

The Party carried on its organizational and educational activities
among the masses of working women through the women’s departments of
its Committees and through the women’s sections of the higher Soviet
government bodies, which took care of the political and vocational
training of women and saw to it that the interests of women workers,
mothers and children were protected.

Woman delegate assemblies were another highly effective means
whereby the Bolshevik Party conducted its work among women. It was
mainly through these assemblies that the Party kept in touch with the
broad non-Party masses of working women. In the year that elapsed
between the Eleventh and Twelfth Party congresses (March 1922-April
1923) the number of women participating in the delegate assemblies rose
from 16,000 to 52,000. Delegates were sent to work in various offices
for a definite period and then reported back to the assemblies.

The appointment of women to take part in the work of various
commissions and sections of the Soviets and in the investigation of the
work of government offices was one of the means of drawing them into
responsible government activity.

In the rural districts the Party conducted its work among women through village and volost
delegates’ assemblies and through district conferences of peasant
women. The following letter, sent to Nadezhda Krupskaya by an
uneducated peasant woman from Ryazan Province, gives a clear idea of
the specific difficulties the Party encountered at the initial stage of
its work of getting peasant women to participate in public life.

“I am now chairman of the mutual aid committee and village women’s
organizer. I just started this work this year. I have got quite a good
deal done in my village. Firstly, I have organized delegates’ sections.
That was very hard to do. The women of our village didn’t want to
attend meetings. I asked my volost organizer for books and
she gave them to me. Then I asked the women to come and listen to them
read aloud. I told them it was interesting, but they wouldn’t come.
They said they couldn’t leave their homes alone. So I decided to go to
them. I went to each house and read aloud. The women liked it. They
asked me to come again. Then I said to them: ‘You know what? Let’s get
the women from ten houses to come together. You will be doing
something, while I read aloud.’ They agreed. I did this for a long
time. Then I suggested that they attend a meeting. I said a speaker
would come from the volost and it would be very interesting.
I persuaded them: and they came. The first time almost the whole
village was there. If you knew how happy I was! But unfortunately it’s
hard for me because I am not educated and don’t know how to go about
these things....”

This letter, truly a human document, shows what striking results
were achieved by the Party’s practical organizational work among the
recently backward peasant women, and what great influence the ideas of
Lenin and Stalin gained among them.

The aloofness and extreme individualism peculiar to peasants were
becoming things of the past. The peasant woman began to feel that she
was a citizen, a member of the great Soviet community. A radical change
was taking place in her mentality, a mentality shaped by ages of
submission and routine.

The Party of Lenin and Stalin organized special women’s clubs in the
non-Russian regions for work among the extremely backward Mohammedan
women.

All this organizational and educational work carried on by the Party
and the Soviet State roused millions of working women of town and
countryside to political activity.

In October 1927 an all-Russian congress of women members of urban
and rural Soviets and of their executive committees was held. It
reviewed the work done in ten years of Soviet government in getting
women to take part in the work of all branches of state administration.
The results recounted were impressive. In 1927 there were 21,221 women
in urban Soviets, 146,251 in village Soviets, 45,741 in volost
Soviets. About 20,000 peasant women participated in the work of the
Peasant Mutual Aid Committees. In 52 provinces 102,146 women were
elected people’s assessors. The total number of organized women workers
and peasants who took part in public activities (delegates) was 620,000.

In just about ten years after the destruction of the foundations on
which the bourgeois landlord society rested women in our country had
become builders of the people’s Soviet State on a footing of really
full equality with men. The force and wisdom of our Party’s policy, the
policy of Lenin and Stalin, and practical socialist construction had
utterly confounded the assertions of bourgeois ideologists concerning
the inferiority of the female sex and put an end to the attitude
towards women which had prevailed in class society for thousands of
years.

The Soviet Revolution’s power of transformation was evident in the
changes brought about in women workers and peasants. In her impressions
of the congress, published in Pravda, Krupskaya wrote:

“The first thing that struck one at the congress was the altered
language used by the delegates. Two or three years ago women workers
and peasants did not talk that way. Their language has preserved all
its originality, but many new ideas and expressions have been added to
it. The speakers – poor peasant women and female farm labourers from
various republics, women workers from the mines, textile mills,
fisheries – spoke boldly and frankly about everything – the good and
the bad. These women, with kerchiefs on their heads and their hands
roughened by toil, spoke about planned economy, schedules, taxation,
practical work, attendance at presidium meetings, farm inventory, the
promotion of women, the fight against bureaucracy and red tape,
improvement of quality, control, deficits, etc.”26

The Might of the National Economy of the U.S.S.R.

The doctrine of Lenin and Stalin says that women can attain full
equality only on the basis of economic and social emancipation. Engels
pointed out that the first premise for the emancipation of women is the
re-introduction of the entire female sex into public industry.

The October Revolution destroyed all social, juridical and
conventional barriers to the participation of women in public industry.
This first premise for the emancipation of women was fulfilled as a
result of the victory of the October Socialist Revolution and the
abolition of private ownership of the instruments and means of
production.

The Soviet economic system created all the conditions required for
women to achieve what is most important for their emancipation –
economic equality, an equal status with men in production and
unrestricted opportunities for participation in public industry.

In capitalist society, as Lenin repeatedly pointed out, despite
“emacipatory” laws, women remain enslaved and subordinate. The labour
power they sold to the factory owner for a miserable wage was only a
slight addition to the man’s income. It did not bring women economic
independence, they still remained subjected to men and slaves to
household drudgery.

Immediately the Soviet State was established tens of thousands of
women entered all branches of industry and began to work shoulder to
shoulder with their husbands, brothers and fathers helping the young
Soviet republic to repulse the foreign interventionists and the
whiteguards and to end the economic chaos and famine. Lenin declared
that the success of the Soviet State, its growth and strength, directly
depended on the participation of women in public industry.

“This work begun by the Soviet government,” said Vladimir Ilyich,
“can be advanced only when, instead of hundreds of women, we have
millions and millions of women, all over Russia, taking part in it.
Then, we are confident, the work of socialist construction will be
safe. Then the working people will show that they can live and manage
without capitalists and without landlords. Then socialist construction
will be so firmly established in Russia that the Soviet Republic will
have no cause to fear any external enemies in other countries or within
Russia.”27

The process of drawing women into industry advanced most rapidly
since 1930, when unemployment was abolished in the U.S.S.R. Year after
year, especially during the period when socialist industry and
collectivized agriculture made gigantic strides forward, the number of
women engaged in public production kept increasing. This was in great
measure due to Comrade Stalin’s efforts. Stalin chose this moment, when
it was necessary to muster all our people’s labour forces to cope with
the grand tasks involved in the socialist transformation of the country
“...to bring prominently to the fore the question of the status of
woman, of her position in society and her contribution to the labour
effort as a worker or peasant, and to stress the important role she had
to play in public and social life. Having given the problem of woman
the salience it deserved, Stalin indicated the only correct lines along
which it could be solved.”28

An especially large number of women entered industry during the
years of the Stalin five-year plans. The way for the First Five-Year
Plan adopted by the Party “...had been prepared by the whole course of
development of industrialization and collectivization and it had been
preceded by a wave of labour enthusiasm which caught up the workers and
peasants and which found expression in socialist emulation.”29
This was a grand plan for the construction of Socialism. The main
object of the First Five-Year Plan was to create a heavy industry in
the country which would make it possible to re-equip the other branches
of industry, agriculture and transportation with modern machinery and
reorganize them on the basis of Socialism.

The vast amount of work involved in the realization of Stalin’s plan
to build up the foundations of the Socialist system of economy called
for additional labour power in industry. In response to the appeal of
the Party and the Soviet government hundreds of thousands of women from
the towns and the villages came to work in the factories and mills, in
heavy and light industries, on construction jobs, wherever labour power
was needed.

Throughout the country rose the scaffoldings of giant plants of
socialist industry under construction. At the rapids of the old Dnieper
River work on the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station was in full
swing. Construction work on the Kramatorsk and Gorlovka iron and steel
plants and reconstruction of the Lugansk Locomotive Works had begun in
the Donetz Basin. New collieries and new blast furnaces came into
being. The Urals Machine-Building Works, the Berezniki and Solikamsk
Chemical Works, the huge Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Plant were all
built in those years. The erection of big automobile plants in Moscow
and in Gorky was well under way, as was the construction of harvester
combine plants and the biggest tractor works in the world. A second
coal base, the Kuznetsk field, was being developed in the East.

The number of women taking part in this gigantic construction of
socialist industry rose steadily, and the dividing line between “men’s”
and “women’s” trades gradually disappeared. The technical re-equipment
of all branches of the national economy, the introduction of machinery
replacing manual labour, and the establishment of a wide network of
vocational training courses and schools, as well as a system of
training novices on the job, contributed to this in great measure.
State social insurance for all workers, regulations for the protection
of female labour, the growing number of nurseries, kindergartens,
maternity centres, public dining rooms, free medical assistance and
vacations with pay that could be spent at health resorts, likewise made
it possible for more and more Soviet women to enter industry.

The figures showing the increase in the number of women employed in
the national economy (not including collective farms) during the First
and Second Five-Year Plan periods speak for themselves:

Years

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

Number of women
(in thousands):

3,304

3,877

4,197

6,007

6,908

7,204

7,964

8,492

9,357

Compared with 1929 (per cent):

100.0

117.3

127.0

181.8

209.0

218.0

241.0

257.0

283.2

In contrast to the situation in capitalist countries, where the
great majority of the female proletariat is employed on badly-paid jobs
or doing the unproductive work of domestic servants, in the Land of
Socialism there was a rapid increase in the number of women employed in
large industrial enterprises. While, as we see from the above table, in
the nine years from 1929 to 1937 the number of women employed in the
national economy as a whole increased by 6,053,000, i.e., almost
tripled, the number of women in big industrial enterprises increased
during the same period from 880,000 in 1929 to 3,298,000 in 1937, i.e.,
nearly fourfold.

Thanks to their status of genuine equality, women in the Soviet
Union quickly advanced to jobs requiring the highest technical skill,
found wide scope for their abilities and every opportunity of
developing their talents.

The Party’s policy of widely encouraging the teaching of industrial
trades to women as well as men yielded excellent results. Here are some
figures showing how greatly the proportion of women employed in
industries formerly considered men’s exclusive sphere increased in the
period covered by the first two five-year plans. In 1929, the
percentage of women employed in the coal mining industry was 9.4 %, in
iron and steel manufacturing – 9.3%, in machine building and metal
processing – 10.3%. In 1938 the corresponding figures were 24.5%, 26.3%
and 31.1%.

As employees of socialist enterprises women boldly tackled and
quickly mastered jobs requiring much skill – they became turners,
adjusters, moulders, railway engine drivers, coal-cutting machine
operators. They learned to run the most complicated machinery.

More than 4,000 women worked as engine drivers on the railways of
the U.S.S.R. just before the recent war. Not a single woman was then
employed on this job anywhere else in the world.

Women took full advantage of the wide opportunities offered them by
the Soviet system to acquire higher technical education. The number of
women engineers and technicians increased year by year in all the
branches of Soviet economy. In 1930 there were 3,600 women engineers
and technicians in our industrial enterprises, in 1938 there were
140,000. In eight years the number was multiplied thirty-nine times!
The Party boldly promoted capable women to positions of shop managers,
factory directors, and other leading positions in industry.

With the Marxist-Leninist theory for its unfailing compass and with
Comrade Stalin as its leader, the Bolshevik Party transformed our
country into a mighty socialist industrial power, economically and
technically independent of European and American capital. In 1940
Soviet heavy industry produced nearly twelve times as much as in 1913.

The Party accomplished this because millions of working people
entered industry fully conscious of the fact that they were builders of
a new society. And women made their great contribution to the
magnificent successes of socialist industrialization.

Under the Stalin five-year plans, from 1928 to 1940, the number of
women workers multiplied fourfold. On the eve of the Patriotic War
there were 11,000,000 women employed in industry, transport and on
construction jobs – about 40% of all workers employed. Over 170,000 of
these women were engineers and technicians.

* * *

As more and more women entered public industry in the Soviet Union,
with its prevalent socialist relations of production, and as they
acquired skill and knowledge land advanced to positions of
responsibility, technical and managerial, the complete and real
emancipation of women workers became an accomplished fact.

It was not an easy task to bring this about, but the difficulties
were even greater when it came to emancipating the millions of peasant
women.

The Great October Socialist Revolution turned over to the peasants over 150,000,000 dessiatines30
of land which had formerly belonged to the landlords, capitalists, the
tsar’s family and the monasteries. Under the Soviet system the peasants
at last became masters of their own fate. The facts bore out the truth
of Lenin’s words:

“Every factory from which the capitalist has been expelled, or in
which he has at least been curbed by genuine workers’ control, every
village from which the landlord exploiter has been smoked out and his
land confiscated, is now, and has only now become, a field in which the
workingman can reveal his talents, unbend his back, straighten himself,
and feel that he is a human being.”31

However, during the first years of the Soviet system there remained
in the countryside, along with the most numerous toiling class in the
country, the poor and middle peasants, also the most numerous class of
exploiters in the country, the kulaks, or rich peasants. Unlike the
towns, which were developing along socialist lines, the villages were
still in the grip of private-property relations. Therefore the process
of emancipating women and investing them with economic and civil
equality on a par with men was much slower and more difficult in the
countryside. Peasant women, who comprised the vast majority of women in
the country, were generally more backward and ignorant than women
industrial workers, and the private-property psychology had a much
stronger hold on them. This, naturally, made it all the more difficult
to bring equality to women in the rural districts.

The abolition of the tsarist laws, which sanctioned women’s
subordination and oppression, at once greatly altered the peasant
women’s position. Like all working people they were granted political
rights – the right to vote and to hold office. Every opportunity was
given them to learn to read and write and to gain an education. Peasant
women were drawn into public and government activities. During the
periodic redistributions of village community land in old Russia women
were not taken into account, and therefore the birth of a girl was
regarded as a “visitation of the Lord.” Now, after the October
Revolution, women had the same rights as men in every respect and,
consequently, began to feel more independent economically. However, it
was only after the collectivization of agriculture, and as a result of
it, that peasant women became really emancipated and began to take part
in economic, cultural and public life on a footing of full equality
with men.

Not long before his death Lenin, with the insight of genius,
sketched in his article “On Cooperation” an outline of the means by
which millions of petty producers should be led on to the path of
Socialism. Lenin regarded the struggle to make the countryside
socialist as the last and decisive battle against capitalism. “As long
as we live in a small-peasant country there is a surer economic basis
for capitalism in Russia than for Communism,” he wrote. The way out, he
said, was to build up large-scale heavy industries that could supply
agriculture with machinery and, with this as a basis, to reorganize
farming on socialist lines. Comrade Stalin developed Lenin’s precepts
into an integral theory, the theory of the collectivization of
agriculture. The Bolshevik Party persuaded the peasants to take the
path of collective farming and led the toiling population of the
countryside in an offensive against the fiercely-resisting kulak
exploiters. Under Comrade Stalin’s wise leadership, the Party and the
Government put into effect his teaching on collectivization. In the
countryside, as in the towns, Socialism triumphed.

Collective farming put an end to poverty, pauperism, kulak
exploitation; it switched millions of small individual peasant farms to
the new, bright road of Socialism.

No longer were there millions of poor peasants in the countryside.
The collectivization of agriculture was “a profound revolution, a leap
from an old qualitative state of society to a new qualitative state,
equivalent in its consequences to the revolution of October 1917.”32

During the years of socialist construction an entirely new peasantry
arose in the U.S.S.R., a peasantry such as the world has never known
before. The work of the peasants who have become collective farmers is
not based on individual work in tilling small, privately-owned plots
with primitive implements, as was the case in tsarist Russia and as is
the case now in capitalist countries, but on collective work with
up-to-date machinery and the application of scientific methods. This
opened up wide vistas for the development of agriculture. The system of
collective farming has been the basis of the Bolshevik Party’s
epoch-making achievements which have fundamentally changed the social
life and psychology of tens of millions of peasants and transformed
them into active builders of a new way of life, of new social
relationships.

The victory of collective farming brought about great changes in the
condition of the Soviet peasantry as a whole and had a far-reaching,
beneficial effect on the condition of peasant women. The system of
collective farming gave women an equal economic status with men,
enabling them to work on the same footing as men and receive the same
remuneration for their work.

The system of collective farming freed women from much of the
household drudgery. Along with the collective farms, electric power
plants, children’s nurseries and maternity hospitals made their
appearance in the rural districts. Collective fanning brought with it
extensive opportunities for cultural advancement. Radio, the village
reading room, library, club and cinema gradually became part of the
Soviet village scene.

The First All-Union Congress of Collective-Farm Shock Workers
demonstrated the great changes and improvements that had taken place in
the countryside. Joseph Stalin said in his speech at that congress:

“Look at this congress, at the delegates, and you will realize that
women have long since advanced from the ranks of the backward to the
ranks of the forward. The women in the collective farms are a great
force. To keep this force down would be criminal. It is our duty to
bring the women in the collective farms forward and to make use of this
great force....

“As for the women collective farmers themselves, they must remember
the power and significance of the collective farms for women; they must
remember that only in the collective farm do they have the opportunity
of becoming equal with men. Without collective farms – inequality; in
collective farms – equal rights. Let our comrades, the women collective
farmers, remember this and let them cherish the collective-farm system
as the apple of their eye.”33

Women worked zealously to carry out Stalin’s advice. They encouraged
the introduction of machines and learned to handle them. By the
beginning of 1941 over a hundred thousand women operated combine
harvesters, tractors and other complicated farm machinery.

“In all branches of socialist construction – in industry, transport,
agriculture, in science and art – tens and hundreds of thousands of
Soviet women show splendid examples of socialist work,” the Central
Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) said in a statement on the occasion of
Women’s Day, March 8, 1941.

The millions of women engaged in socialist construction have helped
strengthen our country and have made a valuable contribution to the
cause of Communism. They, our glorious working women, share with the
men the historic credit for having established Socialism in the
U.S.S.R.

* * *

Public ownership of the instruments and means of production,
socialist industrialization and the development of collective farming
gave rise to a wave of labour enthusiasm which caught up millions of
manual and intellectual workers and found expression in socialist
emulation. As Lenin foresaw, socialist emulation became an
inexhaustible source of energy for the progress of Soviet society, an
important method of building up Communism. Socialism made the working
people the masters of their country and for the first time in history
raised the common man, the toiler, formerly enslaved by capitalism, to
the status which should be his by right. Labour in the U.S.S.R. became
a matter of honour, a matter of glory, a matter of valour and heroism.

“The working people of the U.S.S.R. – workers, peasants and
intellectuals – had undergone profound change in the period of
socialist construction.34

The new attitude towards labour as towards a matter of public
importance is characteristic of Soviet people. This new attitude
manifested itself in the first Communist subbotniks, in the
formation of shock brigades and the splendid achievements of shock
workers; in the wave of socialist emulation in response to the call of
the Sixteenth Party Conference (1929) for the fulfilment and
overfulfilment of the plan in industry, transport and agriculture.
Socialist emulation is one of the most wonderful features of the
creative effort of the people to realize the Stalin five-year plans.

In his pamphlet, “A Great Beginning,” about the first Communist subbotniks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin wrote:

“It is the beginning of a revolution that is much more difficult,
more material, more radical and more decisive than the overthrow of the
bourgeoisie, for it is a victory over personal conservativeness,
indiscipline, petty-bourgeois egoism, a victory over the habits that
accursed capitalism left as a heritage to the worker and peasant. Only
when this victory is consolidated will the new social
discipline, socialist discipline, be created; only then will a
reversion to capitalism become impossible and Communism become really
invincible.”35

This radical revolution in the attitude to work developed by leaps
and bounds after the inauguration of the Stalin five-year plans.

And wherever new giant industrial plants were under construction, in
desert steppes and in primeval forests, in bitter cold and torrid heat,
Soviet women were to be found working shoulder to shoulder with men,
showing splendid examples of a socialist attitude to work.

Many women initiated movements which acquired tremendous
significance. Zinaida Troitskaya, for example, started a movement among
women to become railway engine drivers. And 200,000 girls
enthusiastically responded to the appeal issued by outstanding women
tractor drivers for 100,000 girls to take up tractor driving.

Even housewives had the interests of public production at heart.
Wives of factory workers, engineers and executives started a movement
with the aim of promoting social and welfare work. In the opening
speech at an all-Union conference of wives of engineers and executives
in heavy industry, Orjonikidze expressed high appreciation of the
efforts of these public-spirited women for cleanliness and order in
factories, public dining rooms, clubs, nurseries, children’s homes,
workers’ dormitories. He pointed out that in this way “the daughters
our great country, our sisters, have joined the ranks of the active
builders of Socialism, along with their husbands.”

The policy of the Soviet Government and the Bolshevik Party and the
emancipatory influence of the collective-farm system awakened
tremendous forces latent in the masses of peasant women, helped many of
them to reveal their hidden talents. That is why women collective
farmers, in step with women factory workers, were in the first ranks of
the initiators and heroes of the Stakhanov movement, a movement which
opened another glorious chapter in the history of our socialist
construction.

“Only collective-farm life,” said Comrade Stalin in 1935 at a
reception of women shock-worker beet growers, “could make work a matter
of honour, could give birth to genuine heroines in the village. Only
collective-farm life could abolish inequality and put women on their
feet.”

Women were the first to raise the banner of socialist emulation for
a high crop yield. Their initiative was supported by hundreds of
thousands of collective farmers and a nation-wide movement developed
for Stakhanovite harvests.

As the Stakhanov movement spread, hundreds and thousands of women in
town and country joined it. They raised aloft the banner of struggle
for increased labour productivity, for a high standard of work, for
getting the most out of machinery.

The Stakhanov movement, said Stalin, is a movement of working men
and women, which is destined to produce a revolution in our industry.

It was love for their socialist country, devotion to the cause of
Lenin’s and Stalin’s Party, a desire to contribute the most they could
to the noble aim of building a Communist society, that spurred Soviet
women on to work selflessly and display extraordinary creative ability.
Communism is what inspires the desire for great effort. It is the lofty
aim which gives rise to the great energy of our people.

Women of Advanced Soviet Culture

During the first years of the Soviet system one of the most serious
obstacles to the extensive participation of working women in public and
governmental work was their cultural backwardness, a heritage of the
past. Under the Soviet system, however, this cultural backwardness of
women could not serve as an excuse for keeping them out of the great
and creative work of building a socialist society. The Bolshevik Party
and the Soviet Government held that the quickest way to raise the
political and cultural level of tens of millions of women in town and
country was to draw them immediately into public production, political
life and governmental work, and on the largest possible scale. The rise
in the cultural level of women, in its turn, was bound to lend momentum
to the cultural revolution in the country and accelerate the process of
socialist construction.

For thirty years the Party and the Soviet Government have spared no
effort to help women acquire the knowledge and experience which would
enable them to take part, along with the men, in the cultural
development of the country. The achievements in this respect are so
tremendous that at present there is absolutely no dividing line between
the contribution made by men and by women in the creation of a new,
socialist culture. Sufficient to say, women university and college
graduates comprise 42.3% of all the specialists in our country – i.e.,
almost half of the country’s intelligentsia, the professionals who are
helping the workers and farmers build Socialism, run socialist
enterprises and govern the country. Nothing like this has been
achieved, nor can it be achieved, in any capitalist country.

This alone is proof enough that in the U.S.S.R. the position of
women is equal to that of men not only in law but in fact. And the fact
that equality has been achieved in the sphere of culture, a sphere in
which three decades is an extremely brief period, is of world
historical significance.

A stupendous cultural revolution has taken place in the U.S.S.R.
Illiteracy among the population has been completely eliminated as a
result of the enforcement of the law making primary schooling
obligatory. Millions of workers and peasants have joined the ranks of
the intelligentsia. The technical and cultural standards of the workers
and farmers, men and women, are steadily rising. The women of our
country take full advantage of their right to education, a right
guaranteed by the Stalin Constitution.

No other country in the world has such startling achievements to its
credit. In capitalist countries a great number of working-class
children are unable to acquire even an elementary education.

U.S. Attorney-General Clark admitted publicly that several million
children in the United States do not attend school, and over two
million children attend schools which are absolutely inadequate; three
million adults have had no schooling at all and about ten million have
had such insufficient schooling that they are virtually illiterate.

The fact that the peoples inhabiting the former border districts of
tsarist Russia, including their most backward section, the women, have
achieved a higher degree of literacy than the people of the United
States is convincing proof that only a socialist system can ensure the
true florescence of culture, for the degree of literacy is a most
conclusive index of the cultural level of a nation.

The means by which the standard of culture among women improved
during the more than thirty years since the establishment of the Soviet
system were diverse: women flocked into schools of all kinds, from
elementary schools for adults to universities; they participated in
administrative work from the bottom up, from the lower rungs in the
management of economic, public and governmental affairs to positions of
high responsibility as factory directors and heads of whole branches of
economy, and to positions of leadership in the central Party, trade
union and Young Communist League bodies.

The figures for higher education in the U.S.S.R. eloquently
illustrate the rise in the cultural standard of the masses of women.

The Soviet government inherited from the tsarist times 91 higher
educational establishments with 112,000 students – the majority from
families of the bourgeoisie and landlords. Compare this with 554,600
students who were admitted to Soviet higher educational institutions
between 1938 and 1940. The contrast speaks for itself. Naturally, the
number of women students in tsarist Russia was very, very small. Many
universities and colleges admitted no women at all. For that matter,
what was the use of giving women a college education when under the
existing order they would have no opportunity of applying their
knowledge?

The Soviet government attached great importance to the development
of higher education in the country; it was part of the general plan of
socialist construction. The success of the efforts to advance the
national economy and of the cultural revolution largely depended on the
training of highly-skilled specialists.

The Soviet government fostered the people’s desire for knowledge and
education and opened wide the doors of colleges and universities to the
working-class and peasant youth.

There are now 800 institutions of higher education in the Soviet
Union training highly-qualified cadres of the most diverse professions,
and there are more students enrolled in them than in all the
universities and colleges of Europe taken together.

The steadily developing socialist economy requires an ever-increasing number of college graduates.

The very opposite is to be observed in capitalist countries. There
the number of people with college education is diminishing. This is due
to unemployment and the absence of a demand for intellectual labour.
Thus, for example, in the U.S.A. the number of students in 150
technical colleges dropped to one-third, from 110,000 to 38,000, in the
period between 1940 and 1946.

Within a short space of time the numerous Soviet colleges and
universities graduated 1,500,000 young men and women, a veritable army
of intellectuals who came from the ranks of the people, an army which
has taken a most energetic part in the immense effort which has
transformed our country into the most advanced in the world, into a
Socialist State, with a mighty industry and great military strength. In
the stern trial of the Patriotic War the Soviet intelligentsia, reared
and trained by the Soviet system and the Bolshevik Party, fulfilled its
duty to its people and to its country with credit.

From year to year the proportion of girls among Soviet students has
been increasing. During the first ten years after the establishment of
the Soviet system – 1917 to 1927/28 – the number of girl students rose
to 28% of the total number of university and college students. By
1939/40 they already comprised 49.3% of the student body. During the
war this percentage increased still further and today women comprise
more than half of the student body in social-economic, pedagogical,
medical and some other colleges.

Especially noteworthy is the fact that the proportion of women has
been steadily increasing in industrial, transport, building and
agricultural colleges and now amounts to about 40% of the total.

Thus, almost half of the future leaders in industry are women.

Before the revolution women engineers or technicians were
practically unheard of. Fifty years ago there were 848 engineers in St.
Petersburg, and only three were women. According to the 1939 census,
there were 76,000 engineers in Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg), and
24,000 of them were women.

Besides those attending regular schools, millions of women and girls
learn a trade or profession by attending the numerous evening schools,
training courses and circles at factories and collective farms.
Correspondence courses are very popular too. At present there are
approximately 500 special correspondence colleges and correspondence
departments of regular colleges, with over 850,000 students on their
rolls, a considerable percentage of them women.

The proportion of women is especially large in the educational and
medical fields. There are over two million women working in public
education. Women teachers dedicate their knowledge and strength to the
noble task of educating the Soviet youth in the spirit of adherence to
high principles and of loyalty to and love for their country. Over one
million women are employed in the medical services, 126,000 of them
physicians, whereas before the revolution there were in Russia two
thousand women physicians all in all.

Before the revolution the woman scientist was a rare exception. The
students of the Moscow Institute of Ethnography regarded Khalyuzina,
who lectured on ethnography there, with curiosity and amazement. Doctor
Tsiklinskaya, a bacteriologist, attracted universal attention when she
taught at the Higher Courses for Women.

The world-renowned mathematician, Sophia Kovalevskaya, could obtain
no permission to work and teach in Russia. In reply to her request for
permission to return to her native land she received the following
letter from the President of the Academy of Sciences, Grand Prince
Konstantin Romanov: “Inasmuch as our university chairs are closed to
women, regardless of their ability or knowledge, there is no place for
Madame Kovalevskaya in our country.” That was typical of old Russia.

Under the Soviet system science has obtained unlimited opportunities
for development, opportunities wider than any that exist or can exist
in capitalist countries. In our country science serves the people and
therefore boundless vistas open up before it. The Communist Party, the
Soviet Government and Comrade Stalin personally devote unflagging
attention to the development of science, and see to it that scientists
are provided with all the necessary conditions for fruitful work. In
thirty years Soviet science has multiplied our country’s cultural
heritage and enriched all fields of knowledge by great discoveries and
outstanding inventions. Soviet science, developing in complete
accordance with the tasks of building Communism in the U.S.S.R., has
greatly contributed to the conversion of our formerly backward country
into an advanced and mighty socialist power.

And no small share in the progress of Soviet science has been
contributed by women, for under the Soviet system they have
unrestricted access to scientific research. The number of women engaged
in research work has grown steadily and now amounts to approximately
half the total number of researchers.

Thirty-five thousand women are doing research work in
scientific-research institutes and in laboratories, four thousand of
them in the institutions of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.
Over 600 of the latter hold Master’s or Doctor’s degrees. During the
war about 1,500 women earned their Master’s or Doctor’s degrees, became
professors and docents. Science has ceased to be the privileged field
of men.

Soviet women are working with creative ability and talent in all
fields of culture. There is not a single scientific, artistic or
technical sphere in which women do not freely display their abilities.

One hundred and eighty-seven women have won Stalin prizes in
medicine, in physics and mathematics, in history, philology,
agricultural and technical sciences, in literature and in art. Stalin
prizes have been awarded to dozens of working women and peasant women
for important inventions and radical improvements in production
methods. Women, Stalin Prize winners, have distinguished themselves in
Soviet art – in sculpture, drama, opera, ballet and the cinema.

By the inexhaustible creative powers Soviet women display in all
fields of science and culture, by their initiative, political maturity
and high sense of social duty, they have disproved the fabrications of
bourgeois ideologists to the effect that women’s intellectual
capacities are limited. Soviet women, who have attained to the
pinnacles of culture and knowledge, who are builders of our economy and
mothers and educators of the younger generation, are a shining example
of high development and advancement.

The Soviet State affords women every opportunity for physical, as
well as intellectual, development. “In our country of labour,” said V.
I. Lenin, “millions of physically strong people are needed, people with
strong wills, courage, energy and perseverance. It is to them that the
future belongs, with their hands the right to build new foundations of
human society will be won.”

Our physical culture celebrations and parades excite the admiration
of the whole world. Of 3,696.000 members of Soviet sports organizations
about 1,700,000 are women. The achievements of Soviet women in
international sports meets testify to the high development of physical
culture in our country.

Soviet women have brilliantly upheld their country’s prestige at the
sports stadiums of many countries. Their achievements and records
demonstrate to the whole world the superior, all-round development of
Soviet people.

* * *

The victorious development of socialist society would have been impossible without the most active participation of women.

We cannot picture the work of our factories and mills, collective
farms and state farms, our governmental, Party, economic and public
organizations without the participation of women.

We cannot picture successful work in the field of education, of the
training of Soviet children, without the participation in this great
work of a huge army of women teachers.

Women doctors and other medical workers are an important force in the public health services.

Soviet art owes its florescence in great measure to women, who
comprise a good half of the people working in this field of cultural
activity.

In his novel What Is To Be Done? the great Russian
revolutionary-democrat Chernyshevsky made his hero Lopukhov say: “What
sure, strong, penetrating intelligence women are naturally gifted
with!... The history of mankind would advance... more quickly if this
intelligence were active, if it were not rejected and killed.”

And in the same vein A. M. Gorky wrote:

“There is no doubt that if woman were not misdirected in her
development, if the circle of her interests were not artificially
narrowed, if her duties were not restricted to those of concubine,
mother, housekeeper, if she were not held at arm’s length from wide
public, cultural and political work, culture would progress twice as
fast.”

Only under the Soviet social and state system, only under the
leadership of the Party of Lenin and Stalin, did such unparalleled
achievements of women in the technical and cultural fields become
possible. The Communist Party and Soviet Government have to their
credit truly extraordinary successes in bringing about such wide and
active participation of women in the economic and cultural progress of
the country.

III. Mother and Child Care in the Soviet Union

Women hold a highly respected position under the socialist system,
the living embodiment of Leninism, built by our people under the
leadership of the Bolshevik Party. The Soviet system has made the right
to work a reality, has done away with economic crises and unemployment,
and created unlimited possibilities for the improvement of the people’s
standard of living.

On this unshakable foundation rest the provisions made by the
Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government for the care of mother and
child.

In the first period after its establishment the Soviet Government
was beset by many difficulties. It had to organize the people’s war
against foreign intervention and internal counter-revolution; the
country was in the grip of starvation and chaos. Yet even then it took
special measures to ensure the welfare of mother and child.

A Committee for the Protection of Children was set up by the Council
of People’s Commissars. Love and paternal solicitude for children and
the most warm-hearted consideration for the needs of mother and child
pervade the decree issued by the Soviet Government in January 1918.

“The lives of two million infants, hardly begun on the earth,” the
decree reads, “were extinguished in Russia every year due to the
ignorance and backwardness of an oppressed people and the callousness
and indifference of the class state. Every year two million afflicted
mothers watered the soil of Russia with bitter tears, as, with
toil-roughened hands, they filled the tiny graves of innocent victims
of a monstrous state system, whose death was so senseless.

“After centuries of vain seeking, human intelligence has finally
found the path to that radiant and happy era in which the working class
itself is freely establishing such forms of protection of motherhood as
will preserve the mother for the child, and the child for the mother.”

This decree laid the foundation for the introduction of various
measures and regulations for the protection of mother and child,
measures which became possible only in our socialist state.

Year by year a more extensive program of measures in this field was
put into effect. Numerous laws adopted by the state and decisions
passed by trade unions define the rights and privileges of mothers and
children.

The Soviet laws ensure hygienic, healthful working conditions and contain special provisions for the health of mothers.

Factory and office administrations are obliged to transfer pregnant
women to easier jobs, to work they can do without detriment to their
health, and to pay them wages equal to their average earnings for the
previous six months. It is against the law to let pregnant women and
nursing mothers work nights or overtime.

In addition to the regular dinner hour, mothers are allowed
intermissions of at least half an hour in length each, at intervals of
no less than 31/2 hours, so that they may nurse their infants. No part
of their wages is deducted for these intermissions.

Whenever the country was in difficult straits the Soviet Government
paid special attention to the needs of mothers and children. During the
strenuous, tense days of the Patriotic War, when people worked
literally without respite, the Government of the U.S.S.R. ordered all
factory and office managers to give mothers of children under eight a
regular weekly free day, and all pregnant women their regular annual
vacations, to follow maternity leave if so desired. Even before the war
was over the government increased maternity leave from 63 days to 77,
with the provision that it may be extended in cases of abnormal
childbirth or of the birth of twins.

In view of the increased mechanization of labour and the improvement
of safety devices and working conditions in our industries, the Soviet
Government found it possible to permit the more extensive employment of
female labour. However, the Soviet law forbids the employment of women
on jobs that are too heavy for them or likely to affect their health,
as enumerated in a special list. The law makes it the duty of directors
of factories and offices in which female labour is widely employed to
provide special rest rooms for women and a room where women may nurse
their infants.

The above-mentioned measures show the concern displayed by the state
for the health of working women. The same concern is displayed for the
health of mothers on collective farms. The Stalin statute of the
agricultural artel (or collective farm) provides that “women shall be
relieved from work one month before and one month after confinement,
for which period they are to be credited with one-half the average
number of workday units they earn when working.”

Expectant mothers in the U.S.S.R. are able to place themselves under
the continuous supervision of doctors at free maternity centres for the
whole period of pregnancy. There they are instructed on prenatal and
infant care.

Before the revolution only a very small number of women could afford
medical attendance at childbirth. On January 1, 1914 there were
altogether 6,824 beds in maternity wards and maternity hospitals.
Ninety-five per cent of the women had no medical assistance whatsoever
during childbirth. The result was that 30,000 women died annually in
labour.

In the U.S.S.R. a ramified system of children’s institutions has
been developed on an unprecedented scale, as the following table shows:

1914

1937

Number of beds in regular nurseries

550

627,817

Number of maternity centres

9

4,175

Number of visits to such centres per year (thousand)

44

39,300

Number of maternity beds in general and maternity hospitals

6,824

81,342

Number of infant feeding centres (mill kitchens)

none

1,509

The number of maternity homes and maternity wards in general
hospitals is so large that practically all expectant mothers get
hospital treatment. In 1944, for example, 95% of all pregnant women had
their babies in hospitals. In 1941, before the Patriotic War, there
were 141,878 beds for expectant mothers in maternity hospitals and
wards, of these 61,261 in the rural areas.

Quacks and self-appointed midwives have disappeared from the
villages entirely. All women in childbirth are taken care of at the
collective-farm maternity hospitals. As a result, childbirth mortality
has begun to disappear from the countryside.

Just as in the towns, nurseries have been opened in the rural areas.
Besides permanent nurseries open all year round for children whose
mothers are employed regularly at state farms, machine and tractor
stations and collective farms, there are additional nurseries open
dulling the busiest agricultural season. In 1946 the total number of
places in permanent nurseries was 777,000.

It is interesting to note that as far back as in 1937 the
Orekhovo-Zuyevo District, Moscow Region, alone had more maternity
centres and three times as many nursery beds as the tsarist government
maintained in all Russia.

The young citizen of the Soviet Land enjoys the most solicitous
attention from the moment of birth. The infant is under the observation
of mother and child centres. There the mother can obtain any expert
advice she needs on the care of the child, can have her baby vaccinated
and inoculated against various diseases. The milk kitchens maintained
by these centres prepare special vitamin-enriched baby foods.

The centres also have legal advice offices which maintain close
contact with trade union and other public organizations. They help the
mothers protect their own interests and those of their children.

The assistance rendered mothers by the Soviet State is great and
varied. Working women are paid from the state social insurance funds up
to 100% of their wages or salaries all through the period of maternity
leave. Mothers of large families receive special grants of money.
Parents of newborn babies receive childbirth allowances from the social
insurance funds for the purchase of layettes and special infant foods.

There are special children’s clinics, sanatoriums and forest schools
for sickly children over three. Millions of children spend their
summers at country homes maintained by the trade unions and at Young
Pioneer camps, or at special playgrounds. These institutions combine
medical treatment with educational work which broadens the child’s
knowledge.

The Stalin post-war five-year plan provides for the further
extension of the mother and child care program. By the end of the
five-year plan period, in 1950, the number of permanent places in
nurseries is to be increased to 1,251,000. This does not include the
seasonal nurseries which cater to three or four million children every
year. This number will be sufficient to meet the needs of all
applicants protection of female labour, and for the care of newborn
infants.

In the period since the promulgation of the Decree on July 8, 1944
till January 1, 1947 a total of 7,300 million rubles was paid out in
allowances to mothers for the support of their children, and in the one
year 1947 the sum amounted to 6,000 million rubles. In 1945 over 2,000
million rubles was paid out in allowances to mothers of large families.

Here are a few illustrations. Upon the birth of her twelfth child L.
V. Timonkina (Lenin District, Moscow), who has been awarded the title
of Mother Heroine, received a state premium of 5,000 rubles. By the
time this child reaches the age of five the state will have paid her
18,000 rubles more allowances. Besides, in accordance with the law of
June 27, 1936, Timonkina received 40,000 rubles for the support of her
other children. Matryona Tikhonovna Loshchinova, of the city of Frunze,
a mother of ten children, received allowances amounting to 40,750,
rubles in the course of three years. Mother Heroine Mirkhalikova, a
collective farmer of the Charvodar Collective Farm in the Tajik
Republic, who has given birth to and brought up twelve children,
received over 80,000 rubles in state allowances.

The Soviet Union is the only country in the world where motherhood
and large families are held in such esteem by all. The noble work of
mothers in bringing up young citizens is appreciated and exalted by the
whole nation. This attitude has found expression in the institution of
the title “Mother Heroine,” which is conferred on mothers who have
brought up ten children and more, and also in the institution of the
Order of Maternal Glory and the Maternity medal awarded to mothers of
from five to nine children. In eighteen months the Mother Heroine title
was conferred on 5,838 Soviet women, and over 750,000 mothers received
the Order of Maternal Glory or the Maternity medal.

By the beginning of 1948 the total number of Mother Heroines in the
Soviet Union was 24,993. The Order of Maternal Glory had been awarded
to 592,604, and the Maternity medal to 1,640,452 women.

The huge, steadily increasing sums expended by the Soviet Government
on housing construction and on social and cultural services naturally
improve conditions for Soviet mothers and Soviet children every year.

Housing construction in towns and villages was started by the
Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government on a vast scale as part of
the effort to repair the damage caused by the war. Hundreds of
thousands of houses have been rebuilt and as many new ones built in the
liberated areas of the Soviet Union. Millions of people in the
R.S.F.S.R., the Ukraine and Byelorussia, made homeless by the war, have
moved into new or rebuilt houses.

The expenditures on social and cultural services provided for in the
U.S.S.R. budget for 1948 exceed by almost 10,000 million rubles the
expenditures on such services in 1947. There will be many more pupils
attending grammar schools than there were before the war, and the
number of medical institutions, maternity hospitals and children’s
institutions will be increased.

* * *

The first decrees of the Soviet Government, which put an end to the
degrading forms of marriage relations as laid down in the tsarist laws,
ushered in the rise of a new kind of family, the Soviet family, based
on woman’s equal position in society, on mutual respect and cooperation
between husband and wife, on their equal legal status in the family and
equal rights regarding the children. In the U.S.S.R., where there is no
exploitation of man by man and where none of capitalism’s jungle laws
operate, friendship and fraternity among nations prevail. This is part
and parcel of Soviet ideology. All this provides the framework within
which the new, socialist family becomes ever more strongly knit
together – a process of vast importance for the destinies of the
nation. In our country marriage is a voluntary union of man and woman,
free from all ulterior motives and based upon the sincere affection of
both parties. Marriage in the Soviet Union is free from all traces of
oppressive economic dependence, class, national, racial or religious
restrictions common to marriage in capitalist society.

The Soviet law on the registration of marriages is designed to
encourage stable family ties. The Soviet law, which is based on the
vital interests of the nation, frowns upon any frivolous attitude to
marriage. It obliges parents to support children and children to care
for their aged parents.

The range of intellectual interests of Soviet mothers is
extraordinarily wide, for in the U.S.S.R. all the conditions are
provided for women to take advantage of their right to work and to an
education without having to neglect their duties to their children,
duties which in our socialist society are regarded as sacred.

Inspirited by their honoured position in society and conscious of
the Soviet State’s daily concern for them, Soviet mothers bring up
courageous citizens with high principles and infinitely devoted to
their country. While playing an important part in all spheres of public
and economic activity, women have a great responsibility for the
education of their children. It is their high duty to their country.

At the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party Comrade Stalin
said that “women represent half the population of our country; they
represent a huge army of workers; and they are called upon to bring up
our children, our future generation, that is to say, our future.”36

Particular importance attaches today to training in the spirit of
communist morality, communist ethics and Soviet patriotism. Lenin said:
“The basis of communist morality is the struggle for the consolidation
and completion of Communism. That is also the basis of communist
training, education and teaching.”37

This precept of Lenin’s is sacred to Soviet women, and they are
indeed bringing up citizens of the U.S.S.R. who will carry on the great
cause begun by Lenin and continued by our Party under the leadership of
Comrade Stalin until its final victory.

We know that, as Lenin told us and Stalin teaches us, the danger of
an attack on the U.S.S.R. and of a new world war remains real as long
as imperialism exists. Only the people can prevent such a war.

In 1916 Lenin, writing of the role of working-class women, advised
them to bring their children up as fighters for Socialism, taught them
to say to their sons:

“You will soon be a man. You will be given a gun. Take it and learn
to use it. The proletarians need this knowledge not in order to shoot
your brothers, the workers of other countries, as they are doing in the
present war, and as you are being told to do by the traitors to
Socialism, but in order to fight the bourgeoisie of your own country,
to put an end to exploitation, poverty and war, not by means of good
intentions, but by vanquishing the bourgeoisie and by disarming it.”38

Soviet mothers are bringing up patriots of our Socialist country,
loyal to the great cause of the people, the cause of Lenin and Stalin.
They enjoy universal affection and regard. By their high moral
qualities they have shown themselves worthy of the solicitude displayed
for them by the Socialist State, the Communist Party, and the leader
and teacher of the people, Comrade Stalin.

Take, for example, the case of Yekaterina Yefimovna Revi of
Alma-Ata. Her family consists of 61 children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. When the enemy attacked the Soviet Union 17
members of her family went to the war to defend their country. Eight of
them became officers of the Soviet Army, distinguished themselves in
action and were decorated by the Government. On the day of the
elections to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. (in 1946) 34 members of
Yekaterina Yefimovna Revi’s family accompanied her to the polls. They
all voted for the candidates of the bloc of the Communists and the
non-Party masses.

Mother Heroine Maria Yegorovna Kolodishnikova has lived in the
village of Mushgora, Archangel Region, all her life. She brought up
thirteen of her own children and eleven adopted ones. At the outbreak
of the war her husband, eight sons and two daughters went to the front.
She herself worked indefatigably on the collective farm and has gone on
working after the war. In 1946 she earned 400 workday units.

Many Soviet mothers who have been honoured with maternity decorations had a very hard time of it before the revolution.

“My childhood was cheerless,” recalls E. Andreyeva, who has been
decorated with the Order of Maternal Glory, First Degree. “My father
was an illiterate railway labourer who toiled by the sweat of his brow
to feed us and clothe us. At the age of thirteen I went to work in a
sand pit and never managed to get an education. My children have had a
different kind of life. As the mother of a large family I received
24,000 rubles from the Government. With this money we built a house and
bought a cow. My little daughter Galya asked me: ‘Who built our house,
who bought us a cow?’ and I told her: Stalin did it all.’

“All my older children have received an education – graduated
colleges or technical high schools. The younger ones still go to
school. My son Eugene was at the front and has five decorations. My
children are happy and healthy. They have all spent summers at Young
Pioneer camps and at health resorts, and I am happy in their
happiness.”

Mother Heroine M. Kirillova relates: “My youth was spent in hard and
exhausting labour. There were many, many things I had to do without in
the past. We were nine children. All of us wanted to get at least a
little learning, but not one of us had a single day’s schooling.
Poverty compelled us to go to work. At the age of ten each of us was
sent out ‘into the world.’ I went to work, first as a nursemaid and
later as a servant. All nine of us remained illiterate....

“The Soviet system has changed my life entirely. I have ten children
now. Before the revolution my children would all have been illiterate
like myself. But now, even in primary schools they begin to make plans
for the future, discuss what they will do after graduation.”

And their dreams come true. M. Kirillova’s eldest son, Mikhail,
graduated a technical high school for electricians and is an officer in
the Soviet Army. Her daughter, Nina, graduated a teacher’s college and
is teaching a foreign language there. Eugene finished a factory school
and is an instructor in automobile mechanics. Maria entered a Cooking
School after she graduated grammar school. Varya has graduated a
medical high school. Nikolai attended a factory trade school and has
become a highly skilled shoemaker. Olga graduated a Building Trades
School, and the youngest, Lyuba and Vanya – are still at primary
school. Lyuba is planning to become an engineer and Vanya wants to go
to sea. They shall certainly realize their plans: their right to an
education is guaranteed by the Stalin Constitution.

M. Kirillova herself did not want to lag behind her children. She enrolled in a school for adults and is no longer illiterate.

The proper education and welfare of the younger generation is not
just a private affair in our socialist country, it is a concern of the
state and of society.

The statement of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) “On
International Women’s Day March 8” of 1946 says: “The Central Committee
of the C.P.S.U. (B.) demands of Party organizations that they should
still more make it their daily concern to look after the interests of
women and children, never forgetting that the education of children is
a matter of paramount importance to the state. All Soviet government,
Party and public organizations should render women every possible
assistance in bringing up the rising generation.”

The public initiative and activity displayed in the Soviet Union in the education of children knows no hounds.

Long before the war the Kirov Works in Leningrad was famed for its
excellent children’s institutions. One of the most popular of them and
highly appreciated by the working women was the children’s club.
Children of factory workers came here after school to rest, study or
attend various circles. The club was founded in 1933 and there are many
Stakhanovite workers in the factory who remember the days they spent in
it with a sense of gratitude. During the war the club was closed, the
Government evacuated the children of besieged Leningrad farther into
the interior. Now the club has been reopened. The factory trade union
committee has secured the services of experienced teachers and
instructors and allocated the necessary funds for the purchase of
books, toys and equipment. Mothers working at the factory are perfectly
easy, for they know their children are taken care of.

The system of children’s institutions established in our country has
made it possible for millions of Soviet women to have families without
giving up work, studies or recreation.

In tsarist Russia the lot of orphans, foundlings and “illegitimate”
children was filled with bitterness and gall. They perished in
bureaucratic orphanages. “Guardians” possessed unrestricted rights over
wards, the government and bourgeois society were indifferent and
callous to the fate of orphans.

The Soviet government put an end to this for good and all. There are
no more homeless children in our country. The war, forced upon our
country by the fascists, deprived hundreds of thousands of children of
their parents. But the number of children’s homes was doubled during
the war and now accommodate 627,000 young citizens. Soviet public
organizations greatly assist in the education of orphans. Many offices
and factories “adopt” children’s homes, nurseries, kindergartens, or
schools. They help them furnish their buildings, supply them with extra
fuel, assist with transportation facilities when the children go to the
country for the summer and help them get up celebrations.

Many people adopt or regularly assist orphans. This is a
manifestation of the sentiments of humanity characteristic of Soviet
people. Tens of thousands of Soviet families have adopted small
children who have lost their parents.

The following is an excerpt from a letter to the Department of
Education of Leningrad from a simple Soviet woman, Fyodorova, who
adopted an eight-year-old girl: “People ask me what made me adopt a
stranger’s child,” she writes. “But that is putting the question
wrongly. There are no strangers” children in our country. All Soviet
children are our children, our future. And that is why the whole
country takes care of them. And it seems to me that every Soviet woman
bringing up a child, be it ‘her own’ or a ‘stranger’s,’ should be a
real mother to the child, just as our country is a mother to us all.”

There are many cases on record of one family adopting several
children. In the R.S.F.S.R. alone 30,000 children have been legally
adopted and 162,000 have patrons.

The Soviet land fosters its children lovingly and solicitously,
striving to make those of them who suffered in the war forget their
injuries, bringing them up to be cheerful and energetic, unafraid of
difficulties. The people in our country always keep in mind Maxim
Gorky’s heartfelt words:

“Never before have children been so precious as they are now that
they have before them a cause of world significance, a cause
wonderfully well-begun by their mothers and fathers, a cause which is
gradually stirring among the toiling people of the whole world the
intelligence and the desire to build a new life.”

The education of the future citizens of the Socialist country by the
Soviet schools is conducted in close contact with the family. The
children are brought up to be men and women of culture, industrious,
devoted to the Party of Lenin and Stalin, patriots to whom there is
nothing above the welfare and ever-greater prosperity of their country.

In addition to the family and the school, educational work is
conducted in a large number of extra-school institutions, which
contribute to the all-round development of the future builders of
Communism. Thousands of children’s clubs are open to boys and girls.
There are 100 young naturalists’ centres, 200 children’s technical
training centres, 170 children’s gymnasiums, 700 children’s libraries,
with a great many books, 143 children’s theatres and a large number of
tourist and excursion centres for children, art clubs, amateur dramatic
and music groups.

Soviet women are deeply thankful to their Government and their Party
for the real emancipation they have achieved, and are fully aware of
their moral responsibility in bringing up their children.

The statement of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) “On
International Women’s Day March 8” in 1947 stresses the exceptional
services rendered by mothers in bringing up the younger generation.
“Patriotic Soviet women,” says this statement, “have brought up the
glorious Soviet youth who, during the Patriotic War, proved their
boundless devotion to the Party of Lenin and Stalin and their love for
their country, and are now valiantly coping with the post-war
difficulties, working hard to rehabilitate and further develop the
country’s national economy.”

* * *

Leningrad working women wrote in a letter to Comrade Stalin:

“When we look back we seem to be looking down from a high mountain
and we can hardly believe that that was our yesterday, that we lived in
that dirt, poverty and humiliation.” It is the Soviet system that has
opened before women all opportunities for developing their native
abilities and displaying initiative, and that has secured them the
happiness of cloudless motherhood.

“In no other country in the world are women, as mothers and as
citizens who bear the great responsibility of giving birth to and
bringing up citizens, so respected and so protected by law as in the
U.S.S.R.,” stated a Decision of the Central Executive Committee of the
U.S.S.R. of June 27, 1936.

The Stalin Constitution accords women equal rights with men. The
actual means of exercising these rights to the full are ensured by the
policy of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government. Article 122 of
the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. states that the possibility of
exercising their equal rights is guaranteed by “women being accorded an
equal right with men to work, payment for work, rest and leisure,
social insurance and education, and by state protection of the
interests of mother and child, state aid to mothers of large families
and unmarried mothers, maternity leave with full pay, and the provision
of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens.”

The Stalin Constitution gives legislative embodiment to women’s
freedom and to the conditions which enable them to take real advantage
of their freedom.

The concern shown by the Party and the Government for mothers, for
the health and education of the rising generation of builders of
Communism, and the all-embracing protection of the interests of mother
and child are most noteworthy features of our Socialist State. Lofty
Soviet humanism, the concern for the human being taught by Lenin and
Stalin, underlies all the efforts of the Soviet State for the
protection of the interests of mother and child.

IV. Free and Equal Daughters in the Stalin Family of Peoples of the U.S.S.R.

As we have seen from the previous chapters, the victory of
Socialism, the. Bolshevik Party’s policy towards women, the policy
formulated by Lenin and Stalin, have ensured women in the U.S.S.R. an
equal economic and political status with men. And Soviet women have a
great share in the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. In the course
of our country’s socialist development hundreds of thousands of women
learned to manage public industry and to administer the state.

Here are some figures which eloquently testify to this. In 1922 the
First Congress of Soviets elected five women to the Central Executive
Committee; fifteen years later, in December 1937, the people elected
227 women to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.; and on February 10,
1946 the number of women elected to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
was 277. Besides, more than 1,700 women are members of Supreme Soviets
of Union and Autonomous Republics, and hundreds of thousands are
members of local Soviets of Working People’s Deputies.

The following are the figures for the number of women members of
government bodies as of February 1948: 277 in the Supreme Soviet of the
U.S.S.R., i.e., 20.7% of the total number of members; 1,235, or 26.5%,
in Supreme Soviets of Union Republics; 503, or 29%, in Supreme Soviets
of Autonomous Republics.

Here is a table showing the proportion of women elected to the local
Soviets of Working People’s Deputies in 1947 in some of the Union
Republics:

Total number members elected

Number of Women

Percentage

Byelorussia SSR

64,897

19,379

29.87

Georgia SSR

26,652

7,995

30.00

Kazakh SSR

53,219

17,992

33.81

Kirghiz SSR

12,735

4,269

33.49

Azerbaijan SSR

23,348

8,207

35.15

The women elected to central and local government bodies are among
the finest daughters of the Soviet people. Some of them have won fame
by their achievements in work, others are noted scientists,
distinguished writers or artists. Among them are women of all the
nationalities of the U.S.S.R. and of the most diverse professions and
trades: factory workers and collective farmers, doctors and engineers,
teachers and agronomists, scientific workers, literary and art workers,
executives, public leaders, Party and government workers. Millions of
women hold positions of responsibility in government bodies, in social
organizations, in industry and other branches of the national economy.
Millions of women belong to trade unions, and hundreds of thousands of
them are active members of leading trade union bodies – from local
committees to central bodies. Over 80,000 women are members of district
trade union committees, comprising 56.3% of the total number of members
of district committees; 450,000 members of factory trade union
committees, i.e., 46.9%, and 350,000 trade union group organizers at
factories, mines, power stations, Soviet government institutions, etc.,
or 45.2% of the total, are women. In recent years many women have been
promoted to positions of responsibility in trade union bodies –
positions of chairmen, secretaries and members of presidiums of central
and regional trade union committees.

The fact that women of all trades and professions – factory workers,
collective farmers, scientific, literary and art workers – and of all
nationalities of the great family of peoples of the Soviet Union take
part in economic and cultural construction and in state administration
as equals among equals lends additional strength to the Soviet social
and state system, it is one of the great and undeniable advantages of
socialist democracy as compared with the vaunted democracy of bourgeois
countries.

“My lot would have been quite different were I living in some
capitalist country and not in the Soviet Union,” said Zinaida
Troitskaya, Railway Director-General, Third Rank. “Only in our
socialist country have all people, men and women, every opportunity to
work in their chosen field....

“I was only 22 when I drove a train myself for the first time. I
felt elated, the knowledge that I could do this difficult and useful
job filled me with joy. In the grim days of the defence of Moscow I was
put in charge of directing the flow of transport, and I was truly happy
to be holding a responsible position in those days of anxiety, to feel
that I was doing something that was of help to my Country.

“In 1945, I attended the International Women’s Congress in Paris as
a member of the Soviet delegation. Our delegation was the centre of
attention. And that was natural. For in what other country are women so
active in economic, cultural and political life as citizens enjoying
full equality?

“This knowledge filled all of us with particular pride.

“At present I am the assistant chief of the Moscow Metropolitan
Railway. The government has acknowledged my modest efforts highly and
awarded me the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour,
the Order of the Red Star, the Badge of Honour, and several medals....”

The biography of anyone of the hundreds and thousands of women
members of Soviet government bodies provides the most convincing proof
of the fact that women enjoy true equality in our country, that they
have, as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin said, caught up with the men. Women are
a great force in Soviet society.

Yelena Chukhnyuk is a member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
She was a young girl when she started to work as an engine driver not
long before the Patriotic War broke out. During the war she drove
munitions trains, displaying fearlessness and skill which could well be
envied by the bravest soldiers and most experienced engine drivers. She
drove through fire curtains of enemy artillery, and by ably manoeuvring
eluded the attacks of German bombers. And she always managed to deliver
her precious cargo to the men at the front on time. She won nation-wide
fame by her fine work, and became a Hero of Socialist Labour. Could a
plain girl of the people like Yelena Chukhnyuk attain to such a
position were she living in a bourgeois country? Of course not!

Only in the Soviet Union, where the people are master, is real
appreciation shown for the self-sacrifice, heroism, skill, talent and
patriotism of any ordinary man or woman. By the beginning of 1948 the
title of Hero of Socialist Labour had been conferred on 59 women in the
U.S.S.R.

“My mother’s lot was a bitter one, the lot of the long-suffering
peasant woman,” relates Hero of Socialist Labour Praskovya Angelina,
Member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. “And her children shared
her poverty and her tears. Her older sons had no childhood. All of them
went out into the world when still small children, to work for rich
peasants at a miserable wage. I was no exception. At the age of eight,
I left home and hired out in order to earn my crust of bread....

“My father is 70 years old now, yet he does all he can to help with
the work on the collective farm. He was awarded a medal for valorous
labour during the Patriotic War. The Soviet Government has decorated my
mother too for having brought up seven children. My oldest brother is
an agronomist and has been decorated for his wartime work with the
Order of the Patriotic War and several medals. My second brother,
Vasili, is a colonel and has earned eleven decorations for valour in
active service. My sister, Nadezhda, has been awarded the Order of
Lenin for her splendid work on the collective farm and two medals for
participation in the Patriotic War. My brother Konstantin is now
chairman of a collective farm and also has government awards.

“My work as a tractor driver has brought me honour. Twice I have
been elected to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. and I have been
awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour for the large harvest our
collective farm obtained in 1946.

“We owe all this to our Soviet system. It is the Soviet system that
has made us what we are today, that has raised us so high.”

The Krasnoye Znamya Collective Farm, one of the best in the Kursk
Region, is called a women’s kolkhoz. More than three-fourths of the
total number of workday units are earned by women, and women hold all
the leading positions in the collective-farm administration. Its
chairman is T. P. Dyachenko, member of the Supreme Soviet of the
R.S.F.S.R. In her youth Dyachenko was a nursemaid in a rich peasant’s
house. Now her own children, as well as many of her friends’ children,
have graduated college. Her daughter, Anna Dyachenko, is a physician;
Yekaterina Kalmykova is an engineer, her sister Praskovya and her
brother Sergei are agronomists. Children on the collective farm attend
school where Nina and Tatyana Orlova, former collective farmers, teach.

Many Soviet women, trained by the Bolshevik Party, have become eminent statesmen of the Lenin-Stalin type.

Yelena Dmitrievna Stassova, an old Bolshevik and outstanding member
of the Party of Lenin and Stalin, is well known far beyond the borders
of our country. Yelena D. Stassova is 75 years old. Fifty years of her
life have been devoted to the struggle for the liberation of the
working people, and for the victory of Communism in our country.
Stassova was one of that original group of like-minded fighters who
gathered round Lenin to build a proletarian party, the Bolshevik Party.
Stassova became well-known as an outstanding Party worker before the
first Russian revolution of 1905. In 1905 she was the secretary of the
Northern Bureau of the Central Committee. She was a loyal disciple of
Lenin and waged a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, giving
all her energy to the cause of training the proletariat for the
revolution and of rallying the Party round Lenin. Stassova took an
active part in the preparations for the Prague Conference of the
R.S.D.L.P. which expelled the Mensheviks from the Party and at which
the Bolsheviks formally constituted themselves an independent party, a
party of a new type, the Party of Leninism. Repeated arrests and
banishment to Siberia could not swerve Stassova from the path she had
taken.

At the Sixth Congress of the Party, the congress which headed the
Party for armed uprising, Stassova was elected to the Party’s general
staff, the Central Committee, as an alternate member (later she became
a full-fledged member of the Central Committee). She took a direct and
active part in the Great October Socialist Revolution. For three years,
from 1917 to 1920, Stassova was a secretary of the Central Committee of
the Party. In all the succeeding years she held leading positions in
the Party. Despite her advanced age, Yelena Dmitrievna Stassova,
glorious daughter of the Bolshevik Party, steeled in many battles, is
as active as ever, an ardent propagator of the great doctrine of Lenin
and Stalin, the doctrine of the Party which is leading our people to
the complete victory of Communism in the U.S.S.R.

In our country it is quite the usual thing for women to hold leading
government positions. Maria Sarycheva, Vice-Chairman of the Executive
Committee of the Moscow City Soviet, is also Vice-Chairman of the
Supreme Soviet of the R.S.F.S.R. P. G. Radchenko is Vice-Chairman of
the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian S.S.R. Zoya Andreyeva is President
of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Chuvash Autonomous
S.S.R., and also Vice-President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
of the R.S.F.S.R. Chimnaz Aslanova is Vice-Chairman of the Soviet of
Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. Fatima Kadyrbayeva
is Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Kirghiz Republic.

The Public Health Minister of Azerbaijan is a woman, Kyubra
Faradjeva. The Minister of Justice in the Turkmenian Soviet Socialist
Republic is Nuri Karadjayeva. Tatyana Zuyeva is Vice-Chairman of the
Council of Ministers of the R.S.F.S.R.; Olga Lauristin is Minister of
Social Insurance of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic; Praskovya
Kalinina is Minister of the Food Industry of the Chuvash Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic. Three women, Basti Bagirova, Varvara
Vakholdina and Natalya Kuklina, are members of the Council for
Collective Farm Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R.
Many women are deputy ministers of the U.S.S.R., and of Union and
Autonomous Republics, as well as chairmen of Executive Committees of
local Soviets of Working People’s Deputies. In the R.S.F.S.R. alone
over 27,000 women head village Soviets.

An especially vivid illustration of women’s absolute equality in the
U.S.S.R. is the fact that many of them are judges. This was impossible
in Russia before the October Revolution. At present there are fourteen
women members of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. Women comprise 33.9%
of the members of Supreme Courts of Union Republics. Many women are
presiding judges of regional and territorial courts, and 35% of all
people’s courts judges are women.

Soviet women, as we thus see, hold a prominent place in state
administration bodies. They take full advantage of their equality in
political life, they really exercise their equal rights – an
achievement of historic significance. The Stalin Constitution makes
equal political rights for women the law of the land, and it provides
the guarantees for the full exercise of these rights.

Since the inauguration of the Stalin five-year plans the material
conditions have been created permitting millions of women to take an
active part in the building of Socialism. The policy of extensively
enlisting women in public industry in town and in country and the
constant solicitude displayed by the Party and the Government for the
welfare of all the working people have made Soviet women economically
independent, widened their outlook and the range of their interests.

However, the mere fact of the existence of these conditions would
not have been enough to draw more and more working women and peasant
women into active public and government work. It was necessary,
besides, to give women a political education, to train them in the
spirit of Communism, and this the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet
Government have done and are doing. The splendid fruit of this work is
evident. We feel proud to have the full right to say that women, along
with men, are building the first great Socialist State in the world and
are taking part in the administration of this state.

Only the Bolshevik Party proved capable of accomplishing the world
historical task of transforming a capitalist society into a socialist
one, and the Soviet people regard the Party as their leader and
teacher, wisely guiding them under the leadership of the great Stalin
on the way to the pinnacles of Communism. Soviet women, like all the
Soviet people, regard Comrade Stalin as their best and most beloved
friend, their great leader and teacher.

In the 1947 elections to local Soviets the people chose Comrade
Stalin their first deputy. The hearts of working women and women
collective farmers, the hearts of all Soviet women, are filled with
ardent love for and faith in the great Party of Lenin and Stalin. The
elections proved once more that the Soviet people stand heart and soul
behind the policy of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government,
that the working people of town and country, men and women, consider
the Bolshevik policy their very own.

Both Party members and non-Party people are part of one united
community, welded together by the ideas of the Bolshevik Party, by the
Soviet system, and working to multiply our country’s strength.
Communists and non-Party people fought shoulder to shoulder in the late
war, shedding their blood in common for their country’s victory. In
recent years, both during and since the war, Party membership has
greatly increased. The Party has now a membership of 6,300,000 as
against 3,800,000 before the war. Over one million women, the finest
daughters of our people, are members of the great Party of Lenin and
Stalin.

As far back as in 1920 the immortal Lenin said that “the peoples are
being taught by the course of events to regard Russia as a centre of
attraction.”39
All over the world all true champions of equality and freedom for women
regard the U.S.S.R. as a great model to emulate. The banner of Lenin
and Stalin is the banner of the people’s struggle against imperialism,
for a lasting peace, for national freedom, for people’s democracy and
Socialism.

* * *

From the very first days of the October Revolution, the great
Bolshevik Party took steps to ensure the genuine emancipation of
Mohammedan women, a cause to which it attached vast importance. In
April 1921, when in parts of the Soviet land the thunder of Civil War
had not yet entirely died down, the first non-Party convention of women
of the East was held in response to the call of Lenin and Stalin for a
new, free life. The Party’s work among women of the Soviet East was an
inseperable part of Lenin’s and Stalin’s wise policy in the national
question, the aim of which was to strengthen the alliance between the
proletariat and the peasantry.

Women’s clubs and delegates’ assemblies were organized in the
Eastern republics and regions, and conferences of women promoted to
work in Soviet government bodies were held regularly. The Bolshevik
Party and the Soviet Government assured the economic emancipation of
Eastern women, rendered material assistance to women’s cooperatives,
drew women into industry and organized industrial training courses for
them.

Soviet law, which most emphatically protects the rights of women,
made it a special point to protect the interests of Eastern women. That
was a manifestation of Bolshevik consideration for the special
condition of women in the East.

The remnants of the bourgeois-landlord world – the local landowners,
kulaks, who sucked the blood of the poor, merchants and religious
fanatics – obstinately opposed the Soviet system, persecuted, even
murdered Moslem women who sought freedom and knowledge and went to work
in factories and mills. The emancipation of Moslem women from the yoke
of the old life and customs had to be accomplished in the midst of an
acute class war that was being waged in the non-Russian border regions.
The enemy was not particular about the means employed in the fight
against the emancipation of Moslem women, resorting to treachery, vile
slander, terrorism and even murder.

The Bolshevik Party boldly organized the struggle, and worked
painstakingly and perseveringly, to uproot the centuries-old heritage
according to which women in the East were treated as slaves.

Now, as we look back over the path that has been traversed, we have
every right to declare that the Soviet system has secured for the
Moslem women all civil rights, as it did for all the women in the
non-Russian republics and regions. Socialism and the collective-farm
system have ensured women economic independence and rapid cultural
progress. Many thousands of women in the non-Russian regions have
developed into excellent Bolsheviks, Party and non-Party, have become
statesmen and leaders in industry and cultural activities.

All this has become possible only because the Soviet system wrought
a basic change in the condition of the peoples of the East. The
opportunity was provided for them to exist and develop as free and
equal peoples on a par and in fraternal cooperation with the other
peoples of the U.S.S.R. The consistent implementation of Lenin’s and
Stalin’s policy with regard to nationalities ensured the rapid economic
and cultural advancement of all the Union and Autonomous republics.

With the fraternal help of the great Russian people the formerly
backward regions of old tsarist Russia have become prosperous socialist
republics with modern industries, mechanized agriculture, and highly
developed culture, national in form and socialist in content.

At a conference of leading collective farmers, men and women, of
Tajikistan and Turkmenistan with Party and Government leaders on
December 4, 1935, V. M. Molotov pointed out that: “Our successes are
not based on the exploitation of one people by another; they are based
on the premise that the success of one people becomes the success of
all the other peoples of our country.” And that is why many women
collective farmers of our non-Russian republics, “only recently
backward and obscure people in the village, now, by their honest work
in the collective farms and their persistent struggle for the
advancement of the collective-farm system, give ample proof that they
are firmly holding the banner of victory for the collective-farm system
in their hands.”40

The achievements scored under the Soviet system in the development
of culture, national in form and socialist in content, among all the
nationalities of the great family of peoples in our country seem as if
out of a fairy tale. The tsarist government and the ruling classes of
Russia looked down upon the non-Russian nationalities and regarded
their lands as their colonial possessions. Tsardom oppressed and
exploited these peoples, deliberately hindered their progress, and
never permitted the establishment of institutions of higher learning in
the non-Russian frontier regions. Even primary secular schools were a
rare thing there. Among the Azerbaijanians, Uzbeks, Turkmenians,
Tajiks, Kazakhs and many other nationalities the number of people with
a higher education could then be counted on the fingers of one’s hands.
And it goes without saying that a higher education was out of the
question for women of these nationalities, or of the great majority of
other non-Russian peoples. Even a semiliterate woman was a rare
exception among the oppressed, subservient slaves women were there.
Forty non-Russian peoples in the country even had no written language.

The imperialist bourgeoisie of today, which stifles every striving
for culture among the peoples it oppresses, is like tsardom in its
brutal colonial policy.

One of the finest achievements of the non-Russian Soviet republics
of the East is the advancement of the cultural standard of the masses
and the rise of a national intelligentsia among them – engineers,
physicians, agronomists, teachers, scientists, poets, artists, writers,
many of them women. School attendance is compulsory for boys and girls
alike in the formerly backward non-Russian regions of old Russia, which
are now Union or Autonomous Republics of the U.S.S.R. Universities and
colleges, technical high schools and various vocational schools have
been established in these republics, and there are places of culture,
clubs, libraries and museums.

In pre-revolutionary Turkmenia only seven persons per thousand could
read and write. In 1946 the proportion was nine hundred to a thousand.
At present over 200,000 boys and girls attend public schools in
Turkmenia. This does not include the pupils of factory trade schools,
vocational courses and evening schools. Formerly Turkmenia did not have
a single higher educational institution. Now there are several,
including a teachers’ college, a medical college and an agricultural
college. There are about a thousand libraries in the republic.
Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenia, boasts one of the largest public
libraries in the Soviet Union. Turkmenia has over 1,200 clubs and
reading rooms, five museums and dozens of other cultural institutions.
Before the revolution the theatrical art was unknown to the Turkmenian
people. Now there are fourteen theatres in Turkmenia, including an
opera and ballet theatre.

The extent to which women are represented in the teaching profession
in the non-Russian Soviet republics is indicative of their cultural
progress. The percentage of women among teachers in primary and
secondary schools before the war, in 1941, was as follows: Georgian
S.S.R. – 51.3%, Kazakh S.S.R. – 37.8%, Armenian S.S.R. – 30.9%, Kirghiz
S.S.R. – 30.2%, Azerbaijan S.S.R. – 29.5%, Uzbek S.S.R. – 25.4%,
Turkmenian S.S.R. – 17.6%. In recent years the percentage of women
teachers has still further increased.

The number of scientific workers among the non-Russian peoples has
increased so rapidly that it has been possible to organize Academies of
Sciences or branches of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. in all
the union republics. Many women are among the foremost Academy workers.
Over 100 women are employed in the Georgian Academy of Sciences, nearly
100 in the Azerbaijan Academy, about 200 in the Kazakh Academy, about
50 in the Turkmenian branch of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.,
30 in the Tajik branch, 30 in the Kirghiz branch.

Every republic has its own dramatic theatres and opera houses with
talented producers and actors. Before the revolution there was not a
single theatre on the territory now occupied by the Kazakh, Tajik and
Kirghiz republics. In 1947 the Kazakh republic had 42 theatres, the
Uzbek – 40, the Tajik – 17, the Kirghiz – 11, besides a large number of
moving-picture houses and amateur dramatic and music groups. In 20-25
years under the Soviet system modern dramatic theatres, opera and
ballet have been built and splendid actresses, dancers and singers have
developed in the countries where formerly there were no professional
theatres at all and where men played the female roles in amateur
performances. The names of many outstanding actresses of these
republics are known all over the Soviet Union.

“The revolution emancipated our woman, removed the horsehair veil in
which she had been wrapped for centuries,” says a letter from the
Azerbaijan people to Comrade Stalin. “Azerbaijan women have become
active builders of our socialist society. Women hold positions of
responsibility in the government, in factories, in the oil fields, on
college teaching staffs and in surgical wards of hospitals. There are
women ships’ captains and aeroplane pilots.”

Stalin’s solicitude for mother and child has penetrated to the most
distant corners of our vast socialist country. The women of our
non-Russian republics find a new happiness and joy in motherhood.
Mothers enjoy the solicitude of the government and universal respect. A
ramified system of maternity homes, obstetrical centres, and nurseries
cater to the needs of mothers and children of these republics.

In 1913 there were nineteen kindergartens in all of Russia. Now there are sixty-two in Northern Ossetia alone.

Libraries, clubs, electricity, telephone, radio, good furniture are
common in the towns and villages of the republics where not long ago
patriarchal law and plain barbarism reigned supreme.

The influx of masses of women into industry, their participation in
state administration and public activities and the large number of
women political leaders in the U.S.S.R. is the proof, provided by
history, of the truth and force of the Marxist-Leninist principle that
the woman question can be fully solved in all its aspects only after
the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, class
inequality and the oppression of man by man.

Women of our East have come a long way from domestic slavery and
subservience, from the horsehair veil to active, intelligent
participation in the building of socialist society as Stakhanovites in
industry and agriculture, as engineers, physicians, teachers,
geologists, scientists, leaders in industry and agriculture, in
government administration and political activities. This way was
cleared for them by the Soviet system, by the Bolshevik Party, by its
great leaders Lenin and Stalin.

Women who have recently come to the Soviet Union from abroad, where
they and their families led a life filled with sorrow, humiliation and
poverty, are deeply grateful to their new-found country. Armenians, who
were scattered all over the world, are returning to their homeland, to
Soviet Armenia. One of the first to return was the family of Anna
Pogosovna Deiremejian.

Hers was a joyless life, and her seven children had nothing better
to look forward to. All of them had to go to work at a very early age.

“Our native land welcomed us cordially and with joy,” Anna Pogosovna
relates. “Our big family was given an apartment. I was amazed and
deeply moved by the constant care and attention shown mothers of large
families by the Soviet Government. In no other country in the world is
motherhood so honoured. By government decree I was awarded the Order of
Maternal Glory. That was the happiest day of my life. I receive a
monthly allowance for bringing up my children – this in addition to
assistance in the shape of a large lump sum of money.

“My children will never again have to suffer what they did in the
past. I have no worry about their future. They can study in their
native language and work for the good of their country.”

One of the women on whom the Soviet Government has conferred the
lofty title of Mother Heroine is Maria Petrovna Pechekha, an immigrant
from Poland. The story of her life is an illustration of the position
of women who are languishing under the yoke of exploitation.

Maria Pechekha spent 43 years of her life in Poland under the
gentry. When still a small child she hired out to a landlord and worked
from dawn till dusk. Later she married a farm labourer like herself and
together they shared sorrow and misfortune. They never even dared dream
of a house and land of their own, of a farm of their own. The birth of
every child was welcomed with joy mixed with fear for the future. The
children grew and had to be clothed and given at least some education,
but there wasn’t enough money even for bread. Their children were
barefoot, ragged and hungry. The older children, Yekaterina, Ivan and
Maria went to work for the landowner without ever having been able to
go to school.

When Maria Pechekha immigrated to the Ukraine, which is her native
country, the Government gave her a house, land for a vegetable garden,
over a ton of grain, clothing for the children, and 2,000 rubles. Her
children Genya, Fanya, Yosif, Hannah and little Franek go to school.
The older ones work.

Maria Pechekha’s eyes filled with tears of joy when the Order of
Mother Heroine was handed to her. At that moment her heart flowed over
with love for the great leader of the Soviet people.

The position of women and children in Bessarabia, in Lvov Region and
in other districts freed from the rule of the landlords and capitalists
has also changed fundamentally.

A large number of schools, colleges, clubs, libraries, theatres,
medical institutions have been opened in Western Ukraine, and state
universities function in Lvov, Uzhgorod and Chernovitsy. Within the
last three years 466,000 illiterate adults in Western Ukraine have been
taught to read and write, and over 242,000 illiterate and semi-literate
persons are attending special schools for adults. By the end of 1949
illiteracy will have been entirely eliminated in Western Ukraine and in
the Izmail and Transcarpathian regions of the Ukraine.

The story of the life of L. D. Demyakh, Vice-Chairman of the Supreme
Soviet of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, is a, typical one
and provides a vivid picture of the new, Soviet life of the people of
Western Byelorussia.

“My life began in a poverty-stricken hut in the poor Byelorussian
village of Ostrovo, Grodno Province. My mother – ‘Widow Alyona’ she was
called – could not support the family. We were hungry and poorly clad
and there were no shoes in the house at all.

“ ‘You’ll have to find a job, my daughter,’ my mother said to me when I was thirteen.

“And my life as a farm labourer began – a life devoid of joy and
devoid of hope for anything better in the future. There was nothing
‘Alyona’s daughter,’ – nobody even called me by my own name – could
hope for.

“In 1939 a new life began for me. Immediately Soviet government was
established in Grodno I was given the opportunity to study, to cost off
the burden of ignorance which was the lot of all working women in
Poland under the gentry. I was sent to a special school and in a short
time I was made chairman of our village Soviet.

“In 1940 I was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian S.S.R.

“Is this really you, “Alyona’s daughter,” a deputy?’ I kept asking
myself the first time I came to Minsk to attend a Session of the
Supreme Soviet.

“During the war, when our country was in danger, I took up arms to
defend the great rights brought to the people by the Soviet system.”

In the Latvian S.S.R. the expenditures on cultural development in
1947 were 92,600,000 rubles more than in 1946. The doors of secondary
schools and colleges are wide open to young people. Public health
services and social insurance have improved. The number of medical
institutions is larger than before the war.

The free and equal women of the non-Russian Soviet republics are
working heart and soul for the further strengthening of the Soviet
State and for the development of our national economy and culture.

* * *

Only in our country, where the people rule, have women of all
nationalities the widest, absolutely unrestricted opportunity to
participate in public and political activities. Only in our country is
it possible for women from all walks of life to stand at the helm of
state, as equals among equals, to become members of the Supreme Soviet
of the U.S.S.R., as Pasha Angelina, the Ukrainian tractor driver, Gaji
Perigyul, Azerbaijanian oil fields worker, Aikanush Danielyan, Armenian
actress, Naimo Bazanova. Kazakh biologist, Orz-gul-Anna Muhamedova,
Turkmenian cotton grower, Aishe Gurgenidze, Georgian director of a tea
factory, and many, many other women of all nationalities inhabiting the
U.S.S.R.

The consistent application in our country of the Lenin-Stalin policy
with regard to nationalities and the provision of full, genuine
equality for women in all fields of economic, government, cultural,
public and political life, formed the basis for the political and
cultural progress of women in the non-Russian republics, even in those
which were especially backward before the Revolution.

The number of women in various organs of state power are highly
revealing in this respect. In the Tajik S.S.R. eighty-six women are
members of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic and over four thousand
are members of regional, city, district and village Soviets. Thirty-two
women are members of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh Republic, 345 are
chairmen of village Soviets and thousands are members of local Soviets.
In the Uzbek and Turkmenian Soviet Socialist Republics one-third of the
members of local Soviets are women. The same is true of other republics
of the Soviet Union.

The women of the Soviet republics and regions which have
comparatively recently become part of the Soviet Union and for whom the
Soviet system has opened up hitherto non-existent horizons have
likewise begun to take an energetic part in state affairs.

Thousands of recently backward Galician working women of the Lvov
region are members of village and district Soviets and of the regional
Soviet. Many are members of various permanent committees of village
Soviets.

The very best have been elected to the higher organs of state power.
Alexandra Ivanovna Pastushina, a peasant woman, is now a member of the
Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. M. S. Kikh, M. R. Matsko, P. A. Moskal
and D. D. Polotnyuk are members of the Supreme Soviet of Soviet Ukraine.

Maria Kikh, Vice-Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian
S.S.R., had a hard time of it in Western Ukraine before it became part
of Soviet Ukraine. She was the daughter of a farm labourer and at an
early age went to work as a tailor’s apprentice. Very soon she became
connected with the underground movement and her revolutionary work led
to arrest and imprisonment in the Tarnopol and later in the Lvov prison.

“There were many people in Western Ukraine,” relates Maria Kikh,
“who strove for the establishment of the Soviet system. Its
establishment in 1939 was the greatest joy in our life. In my own life
a momentous change took place: I was elected to the People’s Assembly
of Western Ukraine.

“Our hearts were so full of joy, our emotions so keen and so new to
us, that each day seemed like a wonderful festival. Our boldest plans
and ambitions were becoming realizable. One year later I was a student
of the Lvov University. When the Germans tried to force capitalist rule
on my people again, I joined a partisan detachment that fought in
Western Ukraine.

“Now we are again building our life in accordance with the Stalin laws of the Land of Soviets.”

In bourgeois Estonia women were kept out of government bodies, and
they were paid less than men for the same kind of work. Now, in Soviet
Estonia, they have equal rights with men, and many women who are
talented and loyal to the people have become public and political
leaders. There are twenty-four women deputies in the Supreme Soviet of
the Estonian S.S.R., among them Elfrieda Augustovna Selgmia, a peasant,
Linda Gustavovna Otto, a schoolteacher, Elfrieda Robertovna Kastra, a
working woman employed at the Krenholm Textile Mills.

In bourgeois Latvia women, formally, possessed equal rights with
men. Actually, they were made to feel at every step that they were
inferior and unequal. Women received less pay than men for the same
work. It was much more difficult for women to find jobs, even the most
unskilled, than it was for men. Many women with high school and college
education had to go to work as domestic servants in rich homes or as
farm labourers for rich peasants. Scientific work was an unattainable
dream for Latvian women. There was not a single woman in the Latvian
bourgeois parliament.

The Soviet system has opened all roads to the women of Latvia. There
is nothing and no one to prevent them from taking part in government
bodies, nothing and no one to interfere with their political
activities. And they are, indeed, becoming more active with every
passing day. Thousands of women are members of district and village
executive committees. Thousands of women are representatives of
ten-farm groups and members of permanent committees. Women comprise 25%
of the employees of Soviet government institutions. Eight women have
been elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian S.S.R. and seven
Latvian women are members of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.

The Moldavian people have elected sixty-six women to their Supreme
Soviet. Hundreds of Moldavian women are members of town, district and
village Soviet executive committees, dozens of village Soviets are
headed by women, and hundreds of women are vice-chairmen and
secretaries of village Soviets. Thousands of women are farm
representatives. About two thousand women have been elected to the
boards of cooperatives and to store committees.

The elections of deputies to regional, district, and village
Soviets, held at the end of 1947 and the beginning of 1948 in the Union
and Autonomous Republics, once again demonstrated how closely the
people are rallied around the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet
Government, around the great leader and teacher of the peoples, Joseph
Vissarionovich Stalin.

V. In Defence of the Country

Soviet women distinguished themselves by the great fortitude and
grandeur of spirit they displayed in the Great Patriotic War, in which
they defended the freedom and equality, the happy motherhood and
opportunities for creative work they had gained as the result of the
victory of Socialism in our country. The high moral standard of our
women, infused by the Soviet system and the Communist Party, revealed
itself to the full during the late war.

Women replaced men who had gone to the front, became skilled in the
most difficult trades, and by their strenuous efforts helped to win the
war. Nor did they neglect their children. They took proper care of them
and brought them up, staunchly enduring the wartime privations.

Soviet women fought heroically by the side of men in the ranks of
the Soviet Army and in partisan detachments. The whole world was
impressed by the matchless morale of the Soviet women, their stainless
probity, their readiness to give up all, even life itself, for that
which was dearer to them than life – for their country and for their
people. Soviet women combine majestic simplicity, warm-heartedness, and
the indefatigability of worker and mother with, when necessary, the
wrath of the valiant soldier.

Joseph Stalin’s appeal to the Soviet people to rise in defence of
the honour, the freedom and the independence of our country inspired
all Soviet people to perform deeds of valour in battle and in labour.
In his historic radio address on July 3, 1941, Stalin, speaking to all
the Soviet people, whom he addressed as brothers and sisters, pointed
out that the issue was one “of life and death for the Soviet State, of
life and death for the peoples of the U.S.S.R., of whether the peoples
of the Soviet Union shall be free or fall into slavery.” The beloved
leader, friend and father of the Soviet people urged them to reorganize
all work immediately on a war footing, to subordinate everything to the
interests of the front and to the task of organizing the defeat of the
enemy.

Stalin exhorted the Soviet people working in the rear to organize
all-round assistance to the Red Army, to ensure the supply of
everything the defenders of the country required – food, more rifles,
machine guns, guns, cartridges, shells and aircraft.

The great Party of Lenin and Stalin roused the Soviet people to the
defence of the country, mustered all their inexhaustible forces,
directed them towards the one aim, and thus ensured victory over the
strong and treacherous enemy.

Stalin’s appeal sank deep into the hearts of Soviet women, as of all
Soviet people. The simple, sincere words of a Stakhanovite woman of a
Moscow plant, Comrade Kirpicheva, expressed the feelings of Soviet
women at that time.

“As I listened to Comrade Stalin’s speech I kept nodding my head, as
if in confirmation of his words. And my heart was so full.... The whole
past and the present rose before my eyes, one picture after another.
Then I heard Comrade Stalin talking about production, saying that we
would defeat the Germans if we worked with all our strength to increase
the output of tanks in our country; the output of antitank rifles,
aircraft, grenades, mortars. Why, I thought, that’s something that
concerns me, too.

“I began to figure – how many parts could I produce in a shift? We
must answer Comrade Stalin with deeds. I went back to my machine and as
I worked I thought: every screw, every nut will be of help to our
country. And it is up to us. We’ll make as many as are needed.”

Women working at a Moscow brake factory wrote to Soviet Army men in
the summer of 1941: “Go into battle against the enemy boldly, defend
our land, our children, our freedom. You are leaving for the front; we
are staying behind in the rear. But there is no difference between the
front and the rear in our country. We will give all our strength, all
our energy, to replace you in industry, to supply you with everything
you need. If necessary, we will work day and night; if necessary, we
will help you arms in hand. Don’t worry about us, don’t be anxious – we
are wholly conscious of our duty to our country, we fully understand
the difficulty and the seriousness of the situation.”

The foremost Soviet women patriots wrote in an appeal addressed to all women of the Soviet Union:

“We know that victory will not come easily. So let our hearts be an
inexhaustible spring of courage. Let each of us, seeing a beloved son,
husband or brother off to battle, instil confidence and calmness in
him. Let our hatred for the enemy, our determination to defend our land
unto the last drop of blood, be our maternal blessing. Let our men feel
sure that we are calm, cheerful and as indefatigable in labour as they
are in battle.”

Soviet people appreciated how grave was the danger that threatened their country.

“Everything for the Front, Everything for Victory!” was the slogan.
A mighty wave of socialist emulation swept the whole country – it
surged in the factories of Moscow and Leningrad, the Urals, the Volga
regions, Siberia, the Far East, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Armenia,
Georgia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. The entire nation joined the
patriotic socialist emulation movement. “Front teams,” as they were
called, formed at many factories. They markedly sped up output.

Undaunted by difficulties, women took up jobs at which they had
never worked before. Housewives and office workers went to work as
fitters, turners, drillers, miners, engine drivers, weavers – wherever
labour power was needed. They worked at their new jobs strenuously and
with a will, knowing that their effort was needed to rout the enemy.
The number of women employed in industry, especially in its leading
branches, increased by leaps and bounds. Already in October 1941 women
comprised 45% of all workers in industry. Between 1940 and 1942 the
number of women employed increased from 41% to 53% in industry, from
25% to 36% in railway transport, from 58% to 73% in education, from 76%
to 83% in the medical services.

In the first year of the war the number of women tractor drivers
employed in machine and tractor stations multiplied eleven-fold; the
number of women working as combine harvester operators and chauffeurs
multiplied sevenfold, tractor brigade leaders – tenfold.

As the result of the Bolshevik policy of industrialization
implemented before the war, our people were able to forge the mighty
weapons of victory. In the last three years of the war the U.S.S.R.
produced – on an average per year – over 30,000 tanks, self-propelled
guns and armoured cars, approximately 40,000 aircraft, 120,000 guns of
all calibres, 450,000 light and heavy machine guns, 100,000 mortars.

Comrade Stalin’s speech at the celebration meeting of the Moscow
Soviet on November 6, 1941, gave rise to a new wave of patriotic
enthusiasm among the Soviet people. “Our army and navy,” said Stalin,
“must receive active and effective support from our entire country; all
our workers and office employees, men and women, must work with might
and main in the factories and supply the front with ever-greater
quantities of tanks, antitank rifles and guns, aircraft, artillery,
mortars, machine guns, rifles and ammunition; our collective farmers,
men and women, must work with might and main in their fields and supply
the front and the country with ever-greater quantities of grain, meat,
raw materials for the industries; our entire country and all the
peoples of the U.S.S.R. must organize in a single fighting camp,
waging, together with our Army and Navy, the great war of liberation
for the honour and freedom of our country, for the rout of the German
armies.”41

The Soviet people responded to the leader’s call with fresh deeds of
heroism in battle and in labour. The whole country, from end to end,
became a single fighting camp. The creative genius of the people gave
birth to new methods designed to increase labour productivity to the
utmost.

The movement started by Yekaterina Barishnikova, a Young Communist
League member employed at the Kaganovich First Ball-Bearing Plant, is a
vivid example of the patriotic initiative and devotion displayed by
Soviet working women during the Patriotic War.

Yekaterina Barishnikova’s team added the following postscript to a
letter written to Comrade Stalin by the young workers of her factory
just before the 25th anniversary of the Young Communist League: “Our
dear Joseph Vissarionovich, our whole team promises you that we will
raise our output to 400% of our quota.”

In response to the beloved leader’s appeal to all Soviet people for
a new exertion of effort in order to smash the German aggressors’ war
machine, Yekaterina Barishnikova, an energetic Soviet girl, and the
other girls working with her resolved that henceforth half the team
would produce as much as the whole team had done before.

The team processed important parts on planing machines. “Formerly
one girl operated one machine,” relates Barishnikova. “We undertook to
operate two machines each. It was considered impossible for one person
to operate more than one machine of this type, but we proved that no
job is too hard for Young Communists. We planned our day so as to get
maximum efficiency: we don’t lose a single minute now. Then we speeded
up the machines. And we have rationalized our work so that while one
machine is running a new part is being adjusted on the other.”

It was not easy at first for Barishnikova and her friends to do the
work of two each. But in their ardent patriotism, in their eagerness to
answer the leader’s appeal to help the army, Soviet people, old and
young, like Barishnikova, demonstrated that they could perform wonders.

Barishnikova’s example was followed by others, and, before long, the
work of the front teams of the plant made it possible to transfer one
hundred workers to other jobs. Barishnikova and other girls of her team
issued an appeal to the young workers of Moscow factories to follow
their example. This appeal met with enthusiastic response among workers
in Moscow and in other cities. Within a few months about 20,000 teams
were employing Barishnikova’s methods. In this way over 76,000 workers
were freed to do other work – enough labour power for a dozen new big
factories.

Women went to work in the mining industry, descended into collieries
and iron are mines. Thousands of women did men’s work in the
collieries, mastered the basic mining trades and covered themselves
with glory in the fight for coal. It was not easy for women and girls
to learn to do the work of miners – work done exclusively by men from
time immemorial. But the country required it, and they gallantly put
their shoulders to every kind of work.

“We are perfectly aware of the value of coal,” girl miners wrote in
a letter to the men at the front. “We know that coal means iron and
steel, new tanks, guns, aircraft. Every one of us will perform her duty
to our country with credit.”

Extraordinary valour was displayed by women who worked on the
railways in the war area. Hundreds of thousands of women were employed
on the railways, many as engine drivers, station chiefs, dispatchers;
and they stuck to their jobs under enemy fire. More than 5,000 women
were engine drivers and they drove trains not only in the interior, but
close to the firing line. Over 20,000 women railway workers were
decorated for distinguished services in ensuring the transportation of
supplies needed for the front and for the national economy, and for
exceptional achievements in restoring railway transport under difficult
wartime conditions. The title Hero of Socialist Labour was conferred on
the most outstanding women railway workers.

The wives of many Moscow subway workers reo placed their husbands
when the latter went to the front. Special short-term training courses
were organized where they learned the trades required. They worked as
mechanics, crane operators, electricians, train drivers, in charge of
power station apparatus, stations and block sections.

Yekaterina Mishina, a senior subway driver, formed the first
all-women’s train crew. All the members of the crew became good
mechanics. They did all the minor repairs of the electrical equipment
themselves and learned everything about their train and how to run it.
This train ran strictly on schedule and the crew effected a
considerable saving of electricity. Three of Mishina’s assistants soon
became train drivers themselves. The Government awarded Yekaterina
Mishina the Order of Lenin.

Work on the construction of the third Moscow sub-way line continued
during the war. This in itself was a demonstration of the Soviet
people’s deep confidence in the invincibility of their country, in
ultimate victory over the enemy. Seventy per cent of all the workers
and engineers employed on the construction job were women. Many of them
were in charge of shifts or worked as foremen and team leaders.

When plants and factories were evacuated from the front areas to the
interior of the country, women helped reassemble the machinery of the
transferred plants in record time. Staunchly enduring all hardships and
privations, women helped expand the country’s powerful arsenal in the
east, the arsenal which supplied our army with materiel.

During the war women comprised the majority of workers in the light,
food and textile industries. They made clothing and uniforms for the
soldiers, leather footwear and felt boots, prepared dehydrated and
canned foods.

The defence fortifications built by the people of Moscow played an
important part in the heroic defence of the Soviet capital. In response
to the appeal of the Moscow Communist Party Committee, 500,000
Moscovites, chiefly women, worked day and night building a belt of
fortifications round Moscow. They excavated twice as much earth as was
excavated in the construction of the Dnieper Dam and Power Station. The
Hitlerites never succeeded in piercing these lines at any point.

Working women of the heroic cities of Leningrad, Stalingrad, Odessa,
Sevastopol inscribed immortal pages in the history of the Soviet
peoples’ titanic struggle. For twenty months the fighting line was just
a few tram stops away from Leningrad. The enemy strove to break the
brave spirit of the people of Leningrad by incessant air raids and
artillery shelling. He tried to starve the heroic city into submission.

“There is no distinction between the front and the rear in
Leningrad,” said Andrei Zhdanov during the heroic defence of the city.
“Every inhabitant of Leningrad, man and woman, has found a place in the
struggle and is honestly fulfilling the duty of a Soviet patriot.”

“For 900 days we lived under enemy fire. The fascist murderers fired
10,194 shells at our plant alone; yet in our plant, as in others, there
was no absenteeism or tardiness even during the most terrible days of
the siege. If I had stayed home instead of going to work I would not
only have been ashamed, thinking of the men at the front, of my
husband, a captain of the Red Army, and of my comrades at the Kirov
plant; I should have been ashamed to face the very buildings of
Leningrad.”

She goes on to describe how hungry, half-frozen working women,
hardly able to drag their feet, assembled tanks which were immediately
sent off to the front.

Olga Kovalyova, of Stalingrad, was a steel smelter during the war.
She worked through heavy enemy air-raids until the fascists were at the
city walls, and then she left the shop to join the people’s volunteer
guard in which she fought heroically till she fell in battle.

* * *

Women played an important part in the advancement of collective
farming before the war. During the Great Patriotic War women collective
farmers bore the brunt of the effort of providing the Soviet Army and
the country with wheat, grain and other agricultural produce. The
nation will never forget this great service rendered by women
collective farmers during the war.

The work of the Sotsorevnovanye Collective Farm, Moscow Region,
during the war is an excellent illustration. The majority of the men
from the farm were called up. Most of the work had to be done by the
women, and they coped with it splendidly. Whereas during the last four
pre-war years the collective farm gathered 7,305 centners of potatoes
and 12,330 of vegetables, in the war years, with women doing almost all
the work, the farm grew 15,722 centners of potatoes and 28,589 of
vegetables. The women collective farmers purchased state bonds and war
lottery tickets for millions of rubles, which went for the construction
of aircraft and tanks.

In the last year of the war Cossack women of the Kaganovich
Collective Farm in the Kuban region planted 2,702 hectares of land to
various field crops, a much larger area than was under cultivation
before the war when the farm had more workers, more machinery and more
horses. They delivered to the state 4.5 times as much grain as in the
last pre-war year, thousands of centners over and above their quota.
The increased output per member of the collective farm is an eloquent
testimonial to the enthusiasm with which the women worked. In the last
war year the grain output per able-bodied farmer was 63 centners
against 37.6 centners before the war.

In 1943 women earned over 70% of the total number of workday units
credited to collective farmers all over the country. During the
Patriotic War women became a decisive force in the village.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s prediction that many splendid, talented
practical organizers would be discovered among working women and
peasant women was fully borne out.

Many women collective farmers were promoted to leading positions
during the war. In 1944 over 250,000 women worked as chairmen of
collective farms, brigade leaders, managers of stock farms.

Women collective farmers showed some striking examples of socialist
labour in the effort to obtain bigger crops. “We Russians are not the
kind of people to submit to the enemy,” said Anna Kondratyevna Yutkina,
a Siberian collective farmer. “We’ll do everything in our power, we
won’t spare ourselves, and we’ll hold out, we’ll beat the enemy.” Anna
Yutkina and her field group received a Stalin Prize for introducing
improved farming methods several years in succession and for obtaining
a record potato crop in 1942 – 1,330 centners per hectare. Anna
Yutkina’s methods were emulated by many other women collective farmers.

The importance of tractors in socialist agriculture is well known.
As a rule, tractors were formerly driven by men. During the war women
began to take the place of men, and with good results. Three of the
five tractor brigades that won prizes in the all-Union Socialist
emulation drive during the war were made up of women.

Women comprised 62.5% of the specialized agricultural machine
operators, on whom the harvests of the war years greatly depended.

In 1944 there were over 100,000 high-yield field groups (i.e., teams
who undertook to get extra-high yields) working on the collective-farm
fields. “Testimonial Diplomas” were awarded to 1,150 field-group
leaders for their outstanding achievements when the results of the
all-Union Socialist emulation were summarized, and 968 of these were
women.

Millions of Soviet women worked with might and main in industry,
transport and agriculture during the war. Comrade Stalin mentioned the
great services of this army of ordinary Soviet patriotic women in a
speech delivered in 1944: “The unprecedented labour heroism displayed
by our Soviet women and our valiant youth, who have borne the brunt of
the burden in our factories and mills and in our collective and state
farms, will go down in history for ever. For the sake of the honour and
independence of our country our Soviet women, youths and girls are
displaying courage and heroism on the labour front. They have proved
themselves worthy of their fathers and sons, their husbands and
brothers who are defending our country from the German fascist fiends.”42

Stalin praised Soviet women for their self-sacrificing work for the
front, for their courage in face of all the wartime hardships, for
their example which inspired the soldiers of the Soviet Army, the
liberators of our country, to perform deeds of valour.

* * *

Not only on the labour front did Soviet women defend their country; they also defended it arms in hand.

Back in the years of the Civil War and foreign intervention
thousands of women joined Red Army formations as ordinary soldiers,
political instructors and commanders. In those years V. I. Lenin wrote
that proletarian women would not look on passively while well-armed
imperialists shot badly-armed and unarmed workers, that they themselves
would take to arms. And women – factory workers, peasants, and
representatives of the intelligentsia, the finest among them – took up
arms and selflessly helped their brothers and husbands, fathers and
sons rout the Whiteguards and foreign invaders who were pressing in on
all sides.

In the Civil War the Red Army had in its ranks women who
distinguished themselves as doctors and nurses, as intelligent
political instructors, as capable scouts and as valiant soldiers.
Nadezhda Krupskaya and Rosalia Zemlyachka were two of the prominent
women Communists who conducted important educational and political work
in the Red Army in that period.

Rosalia Samoilovna Zemlyachka’s was a life of splendid work and
achievement. She was born in 1876 and joined the revolutionary movement
at the age of seventeen. At twenty she was a member of the Kiev
Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. That same year, 1896, she was arrested and
imprisoned for over three years. When Lenin’s newspaper Iskra began to appear she became its earnest supporter, spreading its ideas and working as an agent for the paper.

In 1904 Rosalia Zemlyachka participated in the Geneva “Conference of
22 Bolsheviks” and was elected to the Bureau of the Committees of the
Majority.

Zemlyachka took a direct part in the revolutionary events of 1905,
first as secretary of the St. Petersburg organization of the Bolshevik
Party, and later as secretary of the Moscow committee. After the defeat
of the armed uprising in Moscow she continued her work in the
underground movement. While attending the all-Russian military
conference of Bolsheviks she was arrested together with the other
delegates, but soon escaped from prison.

In 1909 the Central Committee of the Party sent Rosalia Zemlyachka
to Baku as secretary of the Bolshevik organization there. But, hounded
by the tsarist secret police, she had to go abroad. In 1915-16, after
her return to Russia, she was a member of the Moscow Bureau of the
Central Committee of the Party. During the October Revolution
Zemlyachka led the heroic struggle of the workers in the
Rogozhsk-Simonov district of Moscow.

The years of Civil War were filled with strenuous work for
Zemlyachka, who was in charge of the political department of an army.
She was decorated with the Order of the Red Banner for her
distinguished services at that time. After the Civil War Zemlyachka
devoted her energies to the work for the consolidation of the Soviet
State. All her life she was a staunch fighter for the great ideas of
Lenin and Stalin, for the purity of the Bolshevik Party line. Rosalia
Zemlyachka’s life was a shining example of selfless service to the
country.

Working women of Petrograd played an important part in the rout of the Yudenich hordes during the Civil War.

When the Party issued an appeal: “Working women must not lose a
single minute; they must do everything they can to help gain
victory....” over 11,000 women marched to the front and joined the men
as machine gunners, signallers, sappers and nurses. Thousands of women
served in the city’s security force. The Women’s Soviet Detachment of
the Neva District did especially good work apprehending deserters.

All through the Civil War, wherever the fate of the young Soviet
republic was being decided, women shared all hardships and dangers with
the men, displaying valour and heroism.

Many valiant deeds performed by women in the Red Army are recorded
in the annals of the Civil War. In the Urals there was a plain peasant
girl who fought in the ranks of the Red Army under the name of Ivan
Penkov. She took part in many a battle. And time and again at critical
moments she would rush forward against the enemy and inspire the others
by her example. In her last engagement she held advancing Whiteguard
Cossacks at bay with fierce machine-gun fire, thereby enabling our men
to effect an orderly retreat to new positions. She went on firing even
after she was surrounded on all sides by enemies, and she died at her
post.

Lyuda Makievskaya was in command of an armoured train, with which
she often penetrated behind the enemy lines, opening machine-gun and
artillery fire and sowing panic in the ranks of the Whiteguards.
Company commander Gedimy, a Buriat girl, often led her unit in attack.
Nurse Balandina, a Communist Party member, was always in the front
ranks during battle, ministering to the wounded. In an engagement at
Yalutorovsky she was taken prisoner and ordered to be shot by the
Whiteguard officer. The fearless woman talked to the soldiers who were
sent to execute the order, told them the truth about the Red Army and
explained the aims of the Soviet government and Communist Party to
them. The soldiers not only refrained from carrying out the officer’s
order, but joined the Red Army.

The fact that women – factory workers and peasants – took part in
the fighting for the establishment of the Soviet system sent Whiteguard
commanders into fits of fury. Here, for example, is a document
characteristic in this respect. It is an order of the day dated April
23, 1919, issued by the Whiteguard general Tomashevsky to the garrison
of the town of Kustanai and made public for the information of the
civilian population. It reads as follows:

“I have personally established that not only men but women too
actually took part in the rebellion of the Bolshevik bands in the town
of Kustanai and villages of the district, and that they made bold to
fire from around corners, from windows, roofs and attics.... Heretofore
these female criminals have been left alone in most cases and have not
received the punishment they deserved. I consider shooting or hanging
quite unsuitable and too much of an honour for such female criminals,
and I warn that the only form of punishment I shall apply to such
persons is flogging to death. I am quite sure that this homely method
will have the desired effect on the weak-minded creatures who should
busy themselves with pots and pans and bringing up a better future
generation, and not meddle with politics which they are absolutely
incapable of understanding.”

Those who like the tsarist satrap Tomashevsky spoke of women as
“weak-minded,” tried to chain them to pots and pans and doom them to
eternal exploitation and oppression, have been flung into history’s
refuse heap.

* * *

The shining examples of the intrepid heroines of the period of
struggle for the consolidation of the Soviet system have been a source
of inspiration to our women, old and young, and also to Soviet writers,
poets and artists. The people will never forget the names of the
thousands of glorious heroines who fought for the young Soviet republic
against the hordes of internal and external counterrevolution in the
period of civil war and foreign intervention. But the history of
mankind has never before known mass heroism like that displayed by
Soviet women in the Great Patriotic War which our people fought against
the German fascist invaders.

“How numerous are the women in the literature and history of our
country who have been exemplary in the lofty morale they have
displayed!” said Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin. “Yet everything that has
gone before pales into insignificance when compared with the grand epic
of the present war; with the heroism and readiness for sacrifice of
Soviet women, their civic valour, fortitude in bereavement, and
enthusiasm in struggle manifested with a force and, one might say,
majesty, never witnessed in the past.”43

For many generations to come people everywhere in the world will
remember the Soviet women, many of them very young girls, who performed
deathless deeds. The world, deeply stirred, witnessed how amid the
flames of the Patriotic War Soviet woman stood up in her full stature
as a staunch and indomitable patriot, a heroine, prepared to sacrifice
her own life and encouraging her children to perform deeds of valour
and endure every trial in the defence of the honour and independence of
the Soviet Motherland. It is characteristic of Soviet women that they
take the nation’s interests close to heart, are imbued with ardent
patriotism and prepared to sacrifice for their country even what is
dearest to them.

At the beginning of the war Zhenya Zhigulenko wrote to her mother:

“I am going to join the air force. Don’t ask any questions, Mother,
don’t try to dissuade me and don’t worry. It must be so.” The years
went by. Mother and daughter corresponded, and not once did the mother
betray her anxiety for her beloved daughter. Only four years later,
when Zhenya Zhigulenko came back home a Hero of the Soviet Union, did
her mother tell her of her anxiety of her sleepless nights and the
tears she had shed.

Alexandra Martynovna Dreiman, a collective farmer, gave her own life
and the life of her infant son for her country. She was arrested by the
German invaders and was told that her life would be spared if she
betrayed the whereabouts of the partisan detachment of which she was a
member. The commandant led her naked through the streets of the town,
offering to return her clothes to her piece by piece as she pointed out
the houses where her friends lived. The Soviet woman did not point out
a single house. Furious, the monsters killed her child.

“You have killed my son, but I have a forest full of sons, the whole
detachment,” Alexandra Dreiman hurled her defiance at the murderers.
Her last words – “Dear mothers, do you hear me? I did not spare my son,
I did not betray anyone!” – reached thousands of Soviet women and
inspired them to perform fresh deeds of valour.

Soviet women displayed their heroism both on the fighting front and
on the home front. Devoted wives and loving mothers, they taught their
children to be brave in battle, to endure the greatest trials without
flinching for the glory of their beloved country. Women like Yelena
Nikolayevna Koshevaya and Alexandra Vasilievna Tulenina, mothers of the
young heroes of Krasnodon, embody the noble qualities of millions of
Soviet mothers. Alexandra Tulenina, a simple miner’s wife of Krasnodon,
together with her son Sergei, a member of the “Young Guard” underground
resistance organization, was subjected to terrible torture in the
Gestapo dungeons. Not for one minute did it occur to her to save her
life and that of her son by shameful betrayal. “Keep quiet, Sergei,”
she said to her son in front of the torturers. And when, before her
eyes, the fascist monsters thrust red hot iron rods into her son’s
wounds, when Sergei’s arm was broken and his face drenched with blood,
this Soviet mother had the supreme courage to comfort her son and to
support him, to instil Bolshevik courage in him: “Don’t give in,
Sergei, my darling, don’t tell them anything, the dogs, not one word!”
By their own example Soviet mothers like Alexandra Tulenina taught
their children infinite loyalty to their country and their people,
taught them not to lose heart, never to submit to the enemy, to avenge
their country’s wrongs and fight to the end, unto victory.

It was women like this simple Russian heroine who gave her country a heroic son whom Maxim Gorky had in mind when he said:

“Let us sing the praises of the mother, the inexhaustible source of
all-conquering life! Without mothers there are no heroes, no poets....
Everything the world takes pride in comes from mothers.”

Anya Pavlova, a Young Communist League member who died the death of
the brave during the siege of Leningrad, wrote in her diary:

“I often think of our country’s fate. For, after all, my country and
I are one. If things go well with the country, they will go well with
me. When shells burst in Leningrad, when the enemy spoils and
demolishes our palaces, museums, houses, I feel as if the Germans were
shooting at my heart, and my heart says to me: Be brave, be honest,
keep in step with the soldiers.”

Our glorious patriotic women did indeed keep in step with the men.
They fought in the front ranks of the defenders of the country, and
showed examples of fearlessness and boundless courage.

Our people will never forget Marina Raskova, that outstanding aviatrix and heroine of the Great Patriotic War.

Many heroic deeds were performed by the fliers – all girls – of the
46th Taman Guards light bomber regiment which was decorated with the
Red Banner and the Suvorov Order, 3rd degree. This regiment was
commanded by Yevdokia Bershanskaya, a Cossack girl from the Kuban, and
the personnel consisted of volunteers – former students and working
girls. The regiment covered itself with glory in four years of fighting
– all the way from the Northern Caucasus to Berlin – and took part in
the final bombing of that city. Many of the brave girl-fliers made over
ten combat flights per day. They excelled in flying planes by
instrument only and in precision dive-bombing. They dropped thousands
of tons of death-dealing bombs within enemy lines, annihilating men and
materiel. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred on
twenty-one fliers of this regiment.

Many were the cases of women inspiring the men on the battlefield by
their personal example. Hero of the Soviet Union Junior Lieutenant
Maria Batrakova, who fought at Leningrad and at Stalingrad, when the
officer in charge of an armoured task force, in which she took part,
was disabled, assumed command of the force and won the engagement. In
another engagement, on the Molochnaya River, Maria Batrakova replaced a
disabled battalion commander and directed the action which ended in
victory for her battalion after 120 hours of fighting. The Soviet
soldiers, who had captured an advantageous position, held it against 53
enemy counterattacks and 18 enemy air raids.

Valeria Gnarovskaya, a young Soviet girl, sacrificed her life
heroically. Two German “Tiger” tanks broke through our defences and
headed for her regiment’s lines. Valeria Gnarovskaya picked up a heavy
bunch of grenades, ran towards the first tank and flung herself under
its treads. The tank blew up. In the time thus gained other soldiers
succeeded in putting the second tank out of action. Valeria
Gnarovskaya’s heroic deed saved the day. She was posthumously awarded
the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The finest daughters of all the nationalities inhabiting our country
defended its freedom and independence on the fields of battle. Shoulder
to shoulder with Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian girls, fought
Tatar girls and Georgian girls, girls from Azerbaijan, Armenia,
Bashkiria and Uzbekistan. They fought bravely defending Leningrad,
Odessa, Kiev, Sevastopol, Minsk, the Donbas, the Caucasus, the Ukraine.

Machine-gunner Mashuk Mahmetova, a Kazakh girl volunteer, fought
till her last breath, repulsing three successive enemy counterattacks.
Nineteen-year-old Alia Maldagulova, another Kazakh girl, was an expert
scout and supplied our command with valuable information. Fatally
wounded, she mustered the strength to kill an enemy officer with her
last bullet. Both girls were made Heroes of the Soviet Union
posthumously.

Ziba Ganieva, an Azerbaijan girl, was studying at a Moscow
theatrical school. When the war broke out she volunteered as a nurse.
Before long she learned to handle a mortar and a machine gun. However,
Ziba Ganieva found that sharpshooting was her true vocation at the
front and in a short time she became a sniper. She shot down 128
Hitlerites.

Burning hatred of the enemy and ardent love for country caused
thousands of girls to become snipers – an honourable and difficult job.

Natasha Kovshova, a Moscow girl just out of school, joined a labour
battalion as a volunteer as soon as the war broke out and went to the
front. The letters this young Communist wrote to her mother are
permeated with dauntless courage and grim hatred of the invaders. In
one letter she wrote:

“I promise you, my beloved mother, that my rifle will not waver in
my hand, that every bullet will hit its mark and strike a fascist
swine.” Natasha Kovshova was true to her word.

Natasha Kovshova and Marusya Polivanova, her friend, a girl of her
own age, shot down over three hundred German soldiers. Dozens of
excellent snipers, both men and women, learned sharpshooting from these
two girls. One day Natasha and Marusya were trapped by the enemy while
on duty. They fought on till their last bullet was gone, and then,
rather than surrender, blew themselves up with a grenade. Both girls
were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The brunt of the work of saving the lives of the wounded and
restoring them to health was borne by the women serving in the medical
corps of the Soviet Army. They served as doctors, nurses, medical
assistants and orderlies, rendering expert aid to the wounded and
taking excellent care of them.

Nina Kluyeva, a trained army nurse, carried six hundred men off the field of battle at the risk of her life.

Medical assistant Maria Pavlenko saved the lives of eighteen men
during one operation when a group blundered onto a minefield. She
worked through the night carrying these men to safety from the
mine-field.

Approximately half a million women were blood donors during the war.
Over five thousand of them were awarded orders, medals and “Honoured
Donor” badges for their help in saving the lives of Soviet soldiers and
restoring them to health. Among those decorated was Nadezhda
Arsentievna Skachkova, great-granddaughter of the great Russian
general, Mikhail Kutuzov, who gave her blood forty times. She was
awarded the Order of the Red Star.

Soviet women sent gifts to the fighting men at the front, cared for
the wounded in hospitals, and donated their savings for the
construction of tanks and aircraft. Turkmenian women gave up their
traditional silver ornaments, contributing more than eight thousand
kilograms of silver to the defence fund.

Thousands of Soviet women adopted and cared for orphans, taking the
place of the mothers they lost. Thanks to the measures adopted by the
Soviet Government – the founding of Suvorov cadet schools, the opening
of new trade schools and the organization of children’s colonies to
take care of war orphans – the war, despite its vast scale, did not
bring in its train any child homelessness, one of the tragic
consequences of the war of 1914-18.

The lofty patriotism of Soviet women revealed itself in numerous
ways during the Great Patriotic War. Women defended their country
alongside of men in all the arms of the service – in the infantry, the
tanks, air force, artillery, engineers and communications. They cared
for orphaned children, gave their blood for the wounded and contributed
their hard-earned savings to the army; they participated in
anti-air-raid defence and helped build defence fortifications.

* * *

The large number of Soviet women who took part in partisan warfare
was an unexampled manifestation of their patriotism. Women responded
enthusiastically to the appeal of the leader of the people, Comrade
Stalin, to form partisan detachments on the enemy-occupied territory,
to kindle partisan warfare everywhere and make conditions unbearable
for the enemy and his accomplices. Members of the Communist Party were
the organizers and leaders of the partisan movement. They fought in the
front ranks of the people’s avengers, took part in the most difficult
operations, were fearless in battle and unwavering in their love for
their country; their example inspired Komsomols and non-Party people to
perform deeds of heroism. Thousands of women joined the ranks of the
people’s avengers and fought side by side with the men. Women who only
yesterday followed the most peaceful pursuits boldly chose the hard
path of grim struggle.

The names of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Liza Chaikina, Ulyana Gromova,
Lyuba Shevtsova, Anna Maslovskaya and many other heroic partisans are
known and infinitely dear to all Soviet people. These cherished names
will go down through the ages as a symbol of heroism, a clarion call to
contemporaries and to future generations always to place their
socialist country above all things, to uphold its honour, freedom, and
independence as true patriots.

The Germans captured a young partisan girl near the town of Vereya,
Moscow Region. She was subjected to the cruellest torture, but not a
word escaped her lips. She did not betray her comrades, she did not
even give her real name. She said she was called “Tanya.” Only some
time later was it discovered that “Tanya’s” real name was Zoya
Kosmodemyanskaya. People who witnessed her heroic death related how, in
her last moments, she had the strength to cheer and encourage those who
survived and were continuing the fight for our cause behind the enemy
lines.

“Farewell, comrades!” Zoya cried as the noose was put around her
neck. “Fight on, do not fear! Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!...”

When Maria Melnikajtes, a valiant Lithuanian partisan, heard the
story of Zoya, she said to her comrades: “That is how we should all act
if we ever find ourselves in a similar situation.” Some time later
Maria was wounded in an engagement with a German punitive detachment,
and, all her ammunition gone, she was taken prisoner. The Germans
subjected the girl to horrible torture to make her give information
about her detachment, but they failed.

Maria stood with her head high beside the gallows on which she was
to be publicly hanged. She faced the crowd of local people whom the
Germans had ordered to come to witness the hanging. She shouted: “Don’t
weep, the Red Army will avenge us. Long live Soviet Lithuania! Long
live Comrade Stalin!”

Women and girls were active in the Communist Party and Young
Communist League underground resistance organizations that functioned
on enemy-occupied territory. They struck terror in the hearts of the
Germans, drove them mad with rage. The Germans called the underground
workers and partisans “Hell’s fiends” and “night devils.”

The Gestapo offered a reward of 3,000 marks, 5 poods of bacon and 25
hectares of land to anyone who would betray to them “Katya” (Varya
Virvich), the leader and organizer of the Young Communist League
underground resistance group in the town of Dobrush, Gomel Region. But
no one betrayed Katya and her friends, and, supported by other Young
Communists, they successfully fought the invaders until Soviet troops
liberated the town.

Thousands of girls distributed leaflets, newspapers, Soviet
literature to the population in German-occupied towns and villages,
disseminating among the people who languished in fascist slavery the
fervent word of Bolshevik truth and urging them to sabotage all the
Germans’ undertakings.

Hero of the Soviet Union Liza Chaikina travelled from village to
village reading Comrade Stalin’s report to collective farmers,
instilling in them faith in the victory of the Soviet Army. She was
captured and tortured, but, looking straight into the rifle barrels,
she flung into the faces of her murderers these words of defiance:
“Death to the German invaders! Long live Stalin! Victory will come!”

Hero of the Soviet Union Anna Maslovskaya sheltered escaped Soviet
war prisoners and helped them cross back to their own lines or join to
form partisan detachments. She connected scattered underground groups
left in the rear with the partisan command and obtained arms for the
partisans. The information supplied by Anya helped the people’s
avengers – Communists, Komsomols and non-Communists – to carry out
daring acts of sabotage and raid German garrisons.

Lyolya Kolesova, a Moscow schoolteacher, was put in charge of a
sabotage group assigned to operate behind the enemy lines. The group
crossed the front line, and moving by compass, sleeping in the snow and
keeping out of the way of German patrols, they penetrated far behind
the enemy lines and brilliantly carried out their assignment. They blew
up stores and routed two German garrisons. Lyolya and her group eluded
all the attempts to catch them, even though the Germans sent special
detachments to hunt them down. The group made many bold attacks and
derailed dozens of enemy trains.

The heroes of the “Young Guard” underground resistance organization
in Krasnodon covered themselves with undying glory. Nearly half the
members of this organization were Komsomol girls. Ulyana Gromova and
Lyuba Shevtsova (posthumously awarded the title Hero of die Soviet
Union) were members of the “Young Guard” leadership. They never thought
of their deeds as heroism, nor did they perform them for the sake of
glory. They were simply doing their duty as young citizens of the
splendid Land of Socialism, brought up in the ranks of the Young
Communist League, doing it as naturally as they grew, lived and
studied. Girls, so different from one another in character and
temperament, each with her individual traits, banded together when the
country was in danger, and inscribed on their banner Stalin’s sacred
words addressed to the partisans, his words about fighting the
treacherous and implacable enemy.

The activities of the dauntless Soviet girls and boys filled the
fascist oppressors with fear and dismay. Now the whole nation knows of
the feats of the young heroes of Krasnodon.

The Young Guards were caught. The Hitlerite brutes flung them, still
alive, into a colliery pit. But even in the face of inevitable death
the heroes of Krasnodon did not lose heart. Their faith in the final
victory of the just cause for which they had sacrificed their young
lives remained unshaken. Before the doors of their cells opened for the
last time the members of the Young Guard listened to a last message
“from headquarters,” tapped on the walls in Morse code: “This is the
final order.... We will be led to our death. We will be led through the
streets of the town. We will sing Ilyich’s favourite song.” And, their
hands bound behind their backs, covered with blood and exhausted, the
Young Guard members talked to their graves, and solemn and sorrowful
sounded the words of the song: “Dying as martyrs, fighting for freedom,
so did we die....”

With soul-stirring power the Young Guard members demonstrated their
unconquerable hatred of the enemy and boundless love for their Soviet
Motherland – feelings fostered in their hearts by the heroic Bolshevik
Party.

The partisans rendered the Soviet Army invaluable assistance. They
annihilated enemy personnel and materiel, routed garrisons and severed
communications. Women partisans frequently displayed examples of
staunchness and endurance in unequal battle, in dangerous and difficult
marches through swamps and forests, in enemy encirclement, when
superhuman will power was required of mere humans.

There were tens of thousands of women partisans. Thousands of them have been decorated for valour.

The Supreme Commander-in-Chief Comrade Stalin addressed women
partisans in his orders of the day and mentioned them in terms of high
praise in his historic speeches.

The wellspring of the heroism displayed by Soviet women is their
fervent patriotism, love and boundless devotion to their socialist
country. The fiery patriotism and unparalleled heroism of Soviet people
is eloquent evidence of the vitality and strength of the Socialist
system.

Referring to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s heroic deed, Mikhail Ivanovich
Kalinin wrote that she “attained the summit of patriotism and moral
grandeur. She imbibed, as it were, all the finest emotions that have
moved our people.”44
These inspiring words are true of thousands of Soviet women and girls,
partisans of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic region, Smolensk and
Moscow regions, the Don and the Kuban; they are true of soldiers of all
arms and all fronts, who, like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, held their
country’s interests, the honour, freedom and happiness of their people
above everything else.

The country paid homage to the valorous deeds of Soviet women. Over
120,000 women in the armed forces have been decorated for distinguished
services on the fronts. The Soviet people are proud of the sixty-nine
women who have been made Heroes of the Soviet Union. The memory of the
women who gave their lives in the fight for the just cause, for their
socialist country, will ever be sacred to the Soviet people.

Speaking to girls demobilized from the Red Army and Navy, Mikhail Kalinin said:

“And there is another thing you have accomplished. Women have
enjoyed equal civil rights in our country since the first days of the
October Revolution. You have won equality for women in still another
field – you have personally defended your country, with arms in hand.
You have won equality for women in a field in which they have hitherto
not acted so directly.”

Lenin prophetically said that the might of the Soviet State lies in
the fact that it is the people’s state, created and administered by the
people in the interests of the people.

With the invincible strength of the Soviet State behind them the
Soviet people won a world-historic military, economic, moral and
political victory in the Great Patriotic War. Our people saved the
civilization of Europe from the fascist brigands. This, said Comrade
Stalin, is a great historic service the Soviet people have rendered
mankind.

The Soviet Army won because it was led by experienced commanders,
trained and raised by the Party of Lenin and Stalin; it was guided by
the most advanced military science, the science created by Comrade
Stalin. The Soviet Army was victorious because the Soviet people and
army were led by the heroic Bolshevik Party, which created and trained
the Soviet Army, converted the country into a single fighting camp and
sent its best sons to the front, where they performed their duty to
their country with exemplary staunchness. Within the first five months
of the war the Moscow Communist Party organization sent over 100,000 of
its members into the ranks of the army; 160,000 members of the
Leningrad Party organization joined the Home Guard divisions.

In battle Communists were models of bravery, valour, courage and
skill. Sixty-five per cent of the Heroes of the Soviet Union are
Communist Party members, and thirteen per cent Young Communist League
members.

The Soviet Army was victorious because it fought its enemies in
accordance with the plans and under the guidance of Joseph
Vissarionovich Stalin, leader and general of genius. “It is our good
fortune that in the trying years of the war the Red Army and the Soviet
people were led forward by the wise and tested leader of the Soviet
Union – the great Stalin. With the name of Generalissimo Stalin the
glorious victories of our Army will go down in the history of our
country and in the history of the world.” (V. M. Molotov.)

The international consequences of the great victory won by the
Soviet Union in the war of liberation against German fascism become
more tangible all the time. The destructive forces of the imperialist
camp have been weakened. The forces of democracy and Socialism on a
world scale are now superior to the forces of reaction and imperialism.

The Soviet Union is proud of the fact that women played a big and
honourable part in the great efforts and heroism displayed by our
people in the war years.

The example of Soviet women shines like a beacon lighting the way
for the women of all freedom-loving countries, for those whom fascism
brought incalculable suffering, grief and loss. During the war the
example of Soviet women taught others not to submit to the enemy, not
to lose heart, to take vengeance for the injuries inflicted by the
enemy.

The heroic deeds and selfless efforts of Soviet women showed what
rich fruit the emancipation of women has borne, what brilliant results
have been produced by the great educational work done by our Party and
our state, which brought women full equality and wide opportunities for
the development of their creative abilities, for the development of all
the best that was in them.

VI. The Condition of Women Abroad

In all capitalist countries – in the U.S.A., England, France,
Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, Spain,
Portugal, Greece, etc., and in the colonial countries – women’s
political, economic and civil rights are to a greater or lesser degree
curtailed. Women enjoy no equality with men in society.

The “theory” that women are inferior is part and parcel of the
ideology of the contemporary bourgeoisie, a tool in its fight against
democracy and Socialism. The practical aim of this “theory,” besides
that of upholding and perpetuating conditions most advantageous for the
unbridled exploitation of the working people in general and of women in
particular, is to exclude women, who comprise half of humanity, from
public and political activity and struggles. The bourgeois ideologists
realize that the larger the section of exploited people who take part
in the active political struggle grow, the more acute will that
struggle become and all the more reason will there be for misgivings
about the fate of capitalism. The unavowed but real aim of all the
diverse bourgeois “theories” on the woman question is to prevent the
millions of working women from taking a direct and active part in the
class struggle, and thus to hamper the course of social development and
prolong the existence of capitalism.

The ruling classes of the U.S.A. leave no stone unturned in their
efforts to present the American way of life as the ideal of political
freedom and democracy. But no matter how hard they try, the
journalists, “scholars” and politicians, bought and maintained by the
magnates of capital, cannot convince anyone that the U.S.A. is a model
of democracy and political freedom.

Innumerable facts disprove the fairy tale about American democracy,
assiduously spread by the bourgeois ideologists and propagandists for
the purpose of deceiving millions of people both in the U.S.A. and in
other countries on which the American imperialists want to fasten their
will. One need but acquaint oneself with the condition of women in the
U.S.A. to see how utterly narrow, empty and false is American bourgeois
democracy.

Officially, under the Federal law, American women enjoy equal rights
with men. But this is mere form. Bourgeois legislators have nothing
against passing a law now and then which may give them a chance to
advertise their “democracy.” But it is a far cry from legislated rights
to their actual implementation.

The factories and mills, mines and power stations, oil fields and
railways, trading firms and banks are in the hands of an insignificant
minority, of a handful of monopolists who are the real bosses of the
country. The possession of untold wealth gives them the power to
subordinate the government’s internal and foreign policy to their own
interests. They own all the means by which ideological influence is
exerted on the masses – the newspapers, radio, publishing houses,
cinema, etc. The millions of exploited people, on the other hand, do
not possess one thousandth of the material means and opportunities
necessary in order to oppose the truth, that which might really promote
the interests of the people, to the stupefying, corrupting propaganda
of the bourgeoisie. Clearly, under such conditions the really free
expression of the wishes of the great majority of voters – the working
people of town and country – is virtually ruled out.

In 1924 Comrade Stalin gave an exhaustive characterization of
bourgeois democracy, one which has been borne out again and again by
subsequent developments. “Under capitalism,” he said, “the exploited
masses do not, nor can they, really participate in the administration
of the country, if for no other reason than that, even under the most
democratic regime, governments, under the conditions of capitalism, are
not set up by the people but by the Rothschilds and Stinneses, the
Rockefellers and Morgans, Democracy under capitalism is capitalist
democracy, the democracy of the exploiting minority, based on the
restriction of the rights of the exploited majority and directed
against this majority.”45

By its very nature bourgeois democracy always has been and always
will be, as Lenin and Stalin repeatedly stressed, formal democracy,
pseudo democracy. Bourgeois democracy is one political form of the rule
of the bourgeoisie, of the propertied classes. It is inimical to the
people, because it is directed against their real rights and interests.
This anti popular essence of bourgeois democracy becomes most evident
when we consider the condition of women.

The bourgeois ideology according to which women should be relegated
to an inferior position in society is widely propagated in the United
States. At the first session of the Council of the Women’s
International Democratic Federation in Prague in February 1947, the
American delegate Helen Phillips pointed out that in the U.S.A. women
have to wage an incessant struggle against public pressure exerted by
the press, radio, cinema, the clergy, who describe women as inferior
beings of no importance to the country. Fully in accordance with this
ideology and in manifest contradiction to the Federal law, which
proclaims the equality of women, the laws of various states greatly
restrict women’s rights in society and in the family. Under the laws of
forty-one states a married woman can have no other residence save her
husband’s. In eight states the husband alone has the right to dispose
of the family’s property. The laws of six states compel women to turn
their earnings over to their husbands. In four states women’s right to
conclude contracts or agreements is limited.

All these laws plus the widespread propaganda belittling women’s
role in society actually lead to their exclusion from participation in
the political life of the country. The facts speak for themselves. The
number of women in the highest government bodies is insignificant – of
435 members of the U. S. House of Representatives, only nine are women.
Women comprise only two per cent of the members of state legislatures.

The equal pay for equal work issue is still on the order of the day.
In recent years this issue has become a particularly sore point because
during the war, when many of the men were called up, while war
production was being vastly expanded, millions of women entered
industry. In 1944 the number of women in industry was eighteen million,
or over 30% of all labour employed. During that period women’s wages
increased slightly, but by the end of the war they were still, on the
average, only 65% of men’s wages for the same work. To this day women
in the U.S.A. are paid less than men for the same work.

When the war ended, the position of women in the U.S.A. became much
worse. Unemployment hit them first. Several million women workers were
discharged. Yet only 16 out of 100 women who work can subsist in case
they lose their jobs. The U.S.A. laws do not guarantee working women
maternity leave. On the contrary, in most cases women are fired at the
first signs of pregnancy.

This is women’s inevitable lot in a capitalist country, where
everything is subordinated to the interests of a handful of exploiters.
Millions of American women whose work during the war yielded the
exploiting capitalists billions of dollars in profits have now become
superfluous, thrown out of work and doomed to poverty and starvation.

Very few women in the U.S.A. are in the position to obtain a college
education. High tuition fees are the first barrier, for only well-off
Americans can pay them. Besides, not all institutions of higher
education admit women. Even medical colleges, where one might expect
women to make up a considerable part of the student body, have a 5%
quota for women.

Racial discrimination is a part of the American scene. Negroes were
slaves for centuries, and their status is virtually the same today.
This has always been considered a natural state in bourgeois America.
Even Abraham Lincoln, an outstanding progressive leader in the fight
against slavery in America, set himself very limited objectives. He
said that it was not his intention to introduce political and social
equality between the races.

And political and social equality between whites and Negroes certainly does not exist in America today.

The laws of most of the states forbid marriages between whites and
Negroes, Indians or representatives of the “Mongolian” races. The
penalty for infringement is imprisonment for from two to ten years. In
some states, according to these laws, persons with l/4 “non-white”
blood are classed as Negroes, Indians or representatives of other
non-white races. In other states the corresponding figure is 1/3, and
under a Virginian law a person with 1/16 non-white blood is not legally
a member of the white race.

The discriminatory race legislation in America does not differ from
the pure “Aryan” blood policy the Nazis enforced in their day. As a
matter of fact, the ruling classes of America were the predecessors of
the German obscurantists, in this respect.

Considering all this, it is easy to understand how cheerless is the
life of the 6,000,000 Negro women in the U.S.A. Since the first slave
ship arrived in North America three hundred years ago, Negro women in
the U.S. have been exploited ruthlessly, and to this day they are
employed on the heaviest and dirtiest jobs, mostly unskilled – as
laundresses, scullery maids, domestic servants.

According to figures for 1940, only eight per cent of working Negro
women were employed in industry. This percentage increased somewhat
during the war, but when the war ended Negro women were the first to be
discharged or transferred to heavy and dirty work. The average wage for
Negroes is half that of a white worker. Hardly any safety devices or
proper sanitary conditions are provided for Negro labour. As a result,
the mortality rate among Negro women and children is twice as high as
among white women and children.

Negroes in the U.S.A. live under unbearable conditions. They cannot
reside in sections where white people live. The Negro sections are
overcrowded and sanitation there is very poor. In many states Negroes
are debarred from moving-picture houses, theatres, libraries,
restaurants patronized by whites, nor may they ride with whites in the
same street cars or railway cars. Lynching of Negroes is still a
frequent occurrence in the U.S.A. Day after day the newspapers, books,
theatre, cinema, radio conduct unbridled anti-Negro propaganda, no
different from the racist hate propaganda which the German fascists
carried on against many peoples of the world.

The position of Negroes in the U.S.A. is a manifest example showing
that in capitalist society the class oppression of the working people
is combined with national oppression, both products of this society.
Millions of Negro women in the U.S.A. endure a triple yoke – as women,
as workers, as Negroes.

Since the end of the second world war American imperialism has
adopted an aggressive, openly expansionist policy, aiming to gain world
supremacy, and, naturally, the reactionary forces have stepped up their
offensive against the democratic rights of the working people in the
U.S.A. The American imperialists are bent on introducing more and more
fascist methods in the country’s political life, in order to crush the
class protest of the exploited and all popular resistance to the policy
of reckless ventures abroad.

The Taft-Hartley Law actually nullifies the workers’ rights.
According to this law, the capitalists, in violation of obligations
undertaken in collective agreements with the workers, have the right to
hire non-union members. This is a blow against the trade unions and
opens the doors wide for strike-breakers. The trade unions’ right to
declare strikes and their right of collective bargaining with the
bosses has been restricted. The law obliges trade unions to remove
Communists from leadership. But the fight against Communists is merely
a pretext for the persecution of all democratic elements in the
country. The same law drastically restricts political activities of the
trade unions, making it illegal for the latter to make any contribution
for political campaigns, including presidential and congressional
elections.

American reaction is using the Taft-Hartley anti-labour law in order to fetter the American proletariat.

The most elementary democratic rights of tens of millions of people are being trampled in the U.S.A. today.

The whole world knows about the doings of the “un-American
activities” Committee. The Committee has blacklisted whole
organizations and hundreds of thousands of Americans, has subjected
them to humiliating examinations. Filthy and fraudulent methods are
used to stamp people as “disloyal,” and thousands of democratic,
progressively-minded people are discharged from government services.

The path which the U.S.A. has taken in its home and foreign policies
is not a sign of strength of the American bourgeoisie; it is a sign of
weakness. The profound crisis of bourgeois democracy stands out most
glaringly in the U.S.A. The imperialists are conducting a frenzied
offensive against the remnants of bourgeois-democratic liberties,
striving to establish a regime of terrorism in the country and in
international affairs they are violating the principle of the
sovereignty of nations, large and small. Actually, this is a
continuation of the policy of the fascist countries, the savage policy
which was utterly defeated thanks to the mortal blows dealt fascism by
the Soviet people and the Soviet Army in World War II.

While pursuing an aggressive foreign policy, the American
imperialists are reducing the standard of living of working people
within their own country. In a demagogic campaign speech President
Truman had to admit that in the U.S.A. inflation “is undermining the
living standards of millions of families. Food costs too much. Housing
has reached fantastic price levels.” “Millions of them,” [the youth],
he said, “live in city slums and country shacks,” “most of our people
cannot afford to pay for the [medical] care they need.” “Our
educational systems face a financial crisis... millions of children...
do not have adequate schoolhouses or enough teachers for a good
elementary or secondary education”....

Such are the realities of American democracy.

* * *

England, that land of “classic parliamentarism,” also provides an
example graphically revealing the effects of the general crisis of
capitalism. England has, in fact, became the junior partner of
rapacious American monopoly capitalism, its mere satellite. British
foreign and home policy is directly influenced by the undeniable fact
that capitalist England is steadily losing its independence and
becoming dependent on the U.S.A. The British government’s policy
furthers this process. Nor does the fact that a Labour government is in
office in England, a government that calls itself “socialist,” make any
difference in this respect. On the contrary, the Labourities, as
Right-wing Socialists, are capitalism’s most loyal defenders. They try
to disguise the true rapacious essence of their imperialist policy with
talk about democracy and Socialism, while actually they are in all
things the faithful tools of the imperialists, doing their best to
demoralize the ranks of the working class. This is the true essence of
Attlee and Bevin, as well as of the Right-wing Socialists of other
countries, as pointed out in the declaration of the conference of nine
Communist Parties in 1947.

Lenin wrote:

“Practice has shown that leading figures in the working-class
movement who adhere to the opportunist trend are better defenders of
the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie itself. Without their leadership
of the workers, the bourgeoisie could not have remained in power.”46

In a radio address in January 1948 Attlee sang the praises of the
Labour government and Labour Party, which, he alleged, was consistently
following the principles of “democratic Socialism,” “individual
freedom” and “political democracy,” “freedom of opinion,” “freedom of
speech.” Naturally, Attlee refrained from illustrating his statements
with facts from life in Britain, for the facts are in crying
contradiction to his demagogic declarations.

Here is one fact: 2% of the population of England own 64% of the
national wealth. Is it not clear, then, that only a handful of rich
enjoy “individual freedom,” while millions of working people, men and
women, have no freedom, except the “freedom” of selling their labour
power to the capitalist and living in poverty?

The Labour government, far from cutting short the fascist intrigues
in the country, condones them. The fascists in England get police
protection, openly hold their meetings, and organize anti-Semite
pogroms. In the name of “individual freedom” and “freedom of opinion,”
the police of the “socialist” government guard the fascist assemblages
and beat up anti-fascists. Of late, the British fascists have become so
aggressive as to cause serious alarm among the broad masses of the
English proletariat.

The offensive of the reactionary forces in England is gaining
momentum. Elementary democratic rights are being curtailed more and
more every day. As in all other capitalist countries, women are in the
worst position.

Officially, women in England enjoy the franchise, but the formal,
hypocritical recognition of women’s right to vote and hold office in
government bodies is a screen for numerous restrictions which greatly
limit women’s rights and their part in political life.

The electoral rights of both men and women are limited by
educational, residential and property qualifications. It is not
difficult to see that these restrictions are directed primarily against
the exploited classes, who comprise the majority of the population, and
this affects working women especially, for they are materially
dependent on men and have even less opportunity than men to acquire an
education.

How small is the part women play in political life in Britain may be
seen from the fact that of 640 members of Parliament only 24, i.e.,
less than four per cent, are women.

Is it possible in general to speak of real political rights of the
people, when the upper house of Parliament is not elected but made up
of men who belong to it by right of birth or of position, appointed by
the king? Not representatives of the people but dukes, marquises,
counts, viscounts, barons, archbishops and bishops make up the House of
Lords.

The law forbidding the employment of married women in the civil
services in Britain was repealed only at the end of 1946. However, this
does not mean that women are widely admitted to the civil service. The
law permits the employment of women in courts and in state attorney’s
offices, yet there are no women judges in England.

Thus, not only is the right of women to participate in government
administration limited; even their right to work in government
administration is restricted. The great majority of Englishwomen are
excluded from active political life.

The economic rights of Englishwomen are also infringed. Inequality
in payment for equal work is a crying form of discrimination against
women and one of the most characteristic and disgusting features of
capitalist exploitation. The employment of female labour power
increased rapidly during World War II. In 1944 the proportion of women
working in war industry was 37% against 16% in 1939. Several million
women in England work side by side with men in capitalist factories and
mills, in public utilities, in trade, but for the same work they
receive only from 50% to 70% of the wages paid to men. Women are doubly
exploited by the capitalists, who exploit all wage workers.

At the Labour Party Conference in Margate, in May 1947, the great
majority of delegates, against the will of the Party leadership,
adopted a resolution calling for an end to be put to discrimination
against women in respect of wages. However, the resolution remained no
more than just another pious wish, for the Labour government leaders
declared that it was impossible to carry out this decision at the
present time. They “forgot” to explain that if the Margate decision
were carried out it would cut into the capitalists’ profits.

The Labour government in England faithfully serves monopoly capital.
The standard of living of the working people there keeps falling
steadily. On the pretext of “reducing dollar expenditures” food rations
were considerably cut in 1947.

In September 1947 meat rations were cut to 350 grams per week; on
October 15 the milk ration was cut 25%; in November a weekly potato
ration of three pounds was introduced, the butter (fats) ration was
reduced to 240 grams per month; the price of sugar was increased 66%.
Simultaneously with the reduction of food rations prices of food, fuel
and clothing and other prime necessities have considerably risen. Rent,
gas and electricity cost much more, as does transportation of all
kinds. There has been a big increase in taxes working people have to
pay. They are on an average 50% higher than during the war. On the
other hand, the profits of British capitalists increased by 85% between
1938 and 1946.

Naturally, the capitalists, who refuse to satisfy working women’s
irrefutable right to equal pay for equal work, cannot be expected to
give women paid maternity leave and guarantee them their jobs upon
return. Thus, the vital interests of mothers as well as of women
workers are trampled underfoot. The laws of England, like the laws of
other capitalist countries, do not provide for maternity protection or
care of mother and child. In France it was only after World War II that
a clause was included in the Constitution granting women equality of
rights, and this was the result of a stubborn fight waged by women with
the support of the progressive forces of the country. However,
constitutional recognition of equal rights is far from equality in fact.

For instance, the law provides for equal pay for equal work.
Actually, women’s wages are from 10% to 15% lower than men’s in
industry, and 20% -30% lower in agriculture. In addition, women’s
rights to a professional education and to advancement at work are
restricted.

At present the French people are in very difficult straits as a
result of the betrayal of their national interests by the Right-wing
Socialists and the ruling reactionary circles who servilely curry
favour with American imperialism. Frenchwomen are suffering want and
privation.

The conditions are described in a letter to Soviet women from Simone Beauclais, a Frenchwoman:

“You probably know that we almost never have enough bread. Endless
queues line up before bakeries which are open once a week, and the
bread we get is baked from imported American flour which is part soya
and part cornmeal. The bread is bad, mouldy and absolutely inedible. My
youngest daughter had a liver attack and my sons got bad stomach pains
due to eating this bread, while for me, who have been suffering from
intestinal trouble for years, this bread is simply poison. You know
that for centuries bread and wine have been staple foods in France.
Wine is extremely expensive now. Last year’s grain crop was an
excellent one. Naturally, one asks, where did the bread go?! This year
the crop is poor. Most peasants won’t even manage to pay for new seed
from the proceeds. The peasants say that the harvest won’t last them
more than a month or two. I don’t like to bore you with these problems
of food, but they haunt me: I have four children, I have to count every
franc, and I have many worries. Besides, it is terribly depressing to
see wretchedness all around, and the number of unfortunates is
countless. I am referring to people who work with all their strength,
not sparing themselves. One of my neighbours is a dressmaker. Yesterday
she showed me a beefsteak she bought, hardly enough for lunch, and it
cost her two days’ earnings.”

The butcher Franco, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s fascist fosterling, is
still in power in Spain, and this is due entirely to the fact that
reactionary forces in America and England are helping him. 125,000
Spanish republicans are being inhumanly tortured and are dying in
hangman Franco’s prisons, among them many heroic daughters of the
Spanish people. There are 20,000 Spanish women in the prisons of Franco
Spain.

In Belgium, Switzerland, Argentina and many other bourgeois
countries a married woman has no right to perform any legal act without
her husband’s consent. She does not even have the right to dispose of
the personal property she owned before marriage. In Switzerland, Turkey
and other countries women employed in the civil service must give up
work at once if their husbands order them to. Under the laws of many
states mothers have no parental rights; only the father has parental
authority. In many countries a woman has no right to sue for divorce
even when she has sufficient grounds for it.

Almost thirty years ago V. I. Lenin gave the following description of bourgeois democracy, which remains true to this day:

“Bourgeois democracy is democracy of flowery phrases, solemn words, pompous promises, high-sounding slogans about freedom and equality,
which actually disguise the lack of freedom and equality for women, the
lack of freedom and equality for the toiling and the exploited people.”47

* * *

As we see from the above, women’s rights are greatly curtailed in
the capitalist home countries. In the colonial and semi-colonial
countries, which are under the yoke of imperialism, women’s position is
very much worse.

The great majority of the population of the globe, and,
consequently, the great majority of women, live in the colonies and
semi-colonial countries. England, France, Holland and Belgium, as we
know, possess colonies which are many times as large as themselves,
both in territory and in population. Formally the U.S.A. has no
colonial possessions, but actually many countries in the world are
controlled and exploited by American imperialism.

The life of the peoples of all these countries presents a dismal picture.

Morocco is not a colony juridically. It is a protectorate of France,
which has undertaken to “promote” the economic and cultural development
of that country. The population of Morocco is 8,000,000, Arabs and
Berbers. Morocco is a fertile country, rich in natural resources. Yet
Morocco cannot provide its own inhabitants with bread. Naked, dirty,
tubercular Moroccan children, covered with sores and tormented with the
itch, fill the city streets, hunt for food in garbage dumps. In
Casablanca homeless women give birth right in the street. Many women
die on the sidewalks, with their babies still sucking at their
shrivelled breasts. There are no hospitals, nurseries or sanatoriums
for children in Morocco. Over 2,000,000 children of school age do not
attend school. Syphilis and tuberculosis carry off whole tribes.

“We are full of fear for the future of our Morocco,” said a
representative of Moroccan women at the first session of the Council of
the Women’s International Democratic Federation. “We are full of fear
for the future of our children, of our people! We are horrified by the
prostitution, thievery, the utter loss of human dignity.”

There is no limit to the avarice, selfishness and rapacity of the
imperialist colonizers. They ruthlessly exploit not only the rich
natural resources of the colonies, but also the most precious wealth on
earth – human beings. India – the jewel of the British Empire – is a
vivid example. In 1943 famine killed 3,500,000 people in India. That is
ten times the number of dead the British Empire lost in the war. And
famine is a common thing in India. In this country of fabulous wealth
millions of people die of starvation every year.

“With their own hands mothers killed their babies to end their
suffering,” said Vidia Kanuga, delegate from India, at the WIDF
Congress.

National disasters are turned to account by profiteers and
marauders. Thousands of colonizer-profiteers grew rich through the
death of millions of Hindus. The British authorities did not deem it
necessary to interfere with their sordid practices.

In a country of about 400,000,000 inhabitants there are only 600
maternity hospitals and child care institutions, i.e., one institution
for 667,000 inhabitants. And it is not the state that maintains these
few institutions. They are maintained by non-governmental organizations.

Child mortality in India is among the highest in the world. It is
especially high in industrial cities. In the one-room homes inhabited
by 90% of the factory workers of Bombay, child mortality reaches 55%:
less than half the number of children born live to be a year old!
Millions die of starvation and disease.

The evils of economic and racial discrimination are aggravated by
the dire material plight of the people, by the absence of any laws
protecting female labour, or providing for mother and child care. There
is no such thing as social insurance. Here are characteristic figures:
In India the average length of life of women is 26.6 years; six million
women die of various diseases every year.

A Communist newspaper in India published a letter from a peasant
woman of Bengal, Mina Ron Gaudharn, to the Provincial Prime Minister.
Here is an excerpt:

“If you want to behold India as she really is you will see, first of
all, a crowd of middle-aged women with hungry children in their arms,
looking for work. They replenish the ranks of those who die in the
streets of Calcutta.... Children die for lack of milk, and those who
survive bear no resemblance to human beings.... In the villages many
people die of cholera. Do not be surprised if you see corpses in the
wayside, covered with plantain leaves or merely with paper. For where
can the dead get clothes if they did not have them when they were
alive!?...

“If you stop at our house (my husband is a teacher, and his pupils
come home to him for their lessons), you will see that the pupils are
naked, while the teacher wears only a loin girdle. We own only one
dhati between us for wearing in the street....

“Sir, will our troubles never end? When will we the in a position to
cook dinners for our husbands and sons? When will landless peasants
have land?”

The full extent of the falseness of bourgeois democracy is revealed
most glaringly in the colonial policy pursued by England and the U.S.A.
The imperialists continue to oppress hundreds of millions of colonial
slaves, at the same time trying to sweeten their brutal policy with
hypocritical talk about granting them sham independence.

An article in the Daily Worker, describing the condition of
women in Nigeria, shows that they live in horrible poverty, starve,
suffer and perish from disease. No more than one per cent of the women
of Nigeria know how to read and write. Nigeria has only four secondary
schools for girls.

The majority of women in Nigeria suffer from disease, and mortality
– from malaria, skin diseases, tuberculosis – is extremely high. Women
and children receive no medical attention. In Nigeria women have to pay
a special tax after they have reached a definite age, and official tax
collectors frequently strip girls right in the street in order to
determine whether they are subject to taxation.

The author of the article declares that the English are to blame for the lamentable condition of the people in Nigeria.

In Kenya Africans are paid one-fiftieth of the wage paid Europeans
for the same work. The two thousand British residents of Kenya, which
has a native population of four million, own fifty per cent of the most
fertile land. Natives are actually deprived of all civil rights.
Ninety-five per cent of the population are not represented in the
Legislative Council of Kenya. Child mortality in Kenya is 500 per 1,000
children born.

In a number of countries of the East, where the Anglo-American
imperialists openly and insolently interfere in the internal affairs,
the reactionaries crush every hint of democratic liberties; they
persecute democratic organizations and progressive leaders. This
naturally makes life even harder for women.

Egyptian women sent a letter to the secretariat of the WIDF
describing the hard lot of Egyptian women. The anti-Communist campaign
launched by the government served as a pretext for arresting many
patriots, shutting down democratic clubs and banning newspapers that
expressed opposition to the treaty of “alliance” between Egypt and
Britain. The Egyptian League of women college students and college
graduates has been disbanded. Orderly student demonstrations are
dispersed by force of arms.

Activities of pro-fascist organizations are encouraged in the
countries of the Levant with the knowledge and the protection of the
British, while the activities of democratic organizations, including
the Women’s Social-Democratic League, are restricted.

Reactionary elements in Iran, enjoying the support of the
Anglo-American imperialists, savagely repress every manifestation of
the democratic movement. Women in Iran possess no rights whatsoever.
They are deprived of the franchise, along with the insane and
criminals. They must obey in everything their fathers or husbands.
Girls may not marry of their free will; wives have no right to sue for
divorce. The husband possesses unlimited power over his wife, he may
cast her out into the street and take her children away from her.

In Abadan the British banned seventeen Iranian trade union clubs and
opened brothels in most of the buildings. Iranian reactionaries
together with the foreign imperialists who are behaving like masters in
that country humiliate and outrage the Iranian people, Iranian women.

In Turkey only seventeen per cent of the population are literate.
Tens of thousands of villages have no schools at all and there is a
strict ban on the sale of such world literary classics as the works of
Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Ostrovsky, Turgenev,
Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Chekhov, labelled “Communist
propaganda.”

There are numerous brothels in the capital of Turkey. In Istanbul
there is a whole street of them, and they are listed in the city’s
official directory. Prostitution is encouraged by the Turkish
authorities.

In a letter to American women the Union of Democratic Women of Korea wrote in 1946:

“On behalf of 800,000 members of the Union of Democratic Women of
Korea we consider it our duty to inform you of the fact that Korean
women in the American zone of occupation possess no civil rights....”
The situation has not improved since then. In Northern Korea, where the
working people have set up a people’s government, women enjoy equal
rights with men. In Southern Korea, the American zone of occupation,
women are still deprived of elementary human rights, and their
democratic organizations are persecuted.

The whole world knows how bitter is the lot of women in Japan. From
time immemorial Japanese cities were full of brothels, into which girls
were sold for a mere pittance by their poverty-stricken parents.
According to official statistics for 1933, fifteen per cent of the
female population of the prefecture of Akita between the ages of
fourteen and twenty-five were sold to brothels, into domestic service
or to factories. The war and its aftermath have made the condition of
Japanese women even worse, for not only have the democratic changes
called for by the surrender terms not been introduced, due to the
policy of the American occupation authorities, but they are countered
in every possible way by the placement of American reaction in Japan.

In fact, the compulsory labour system for women has been
reintroduced in Japan. The majority of working girls are bound by
contracts concluded with their parents. They live in barracks divided
into small cells of ten to twelve square metres each, six or seven
girls in a cell. They must have permission of the management to leave
the premises even for a short time. The girls live like veritable
slaves.

At present brothels are officially banned in Japan. However, in
Tokyo the red-light district is being rebuilt much faster than any
other section. Hose Otome, a medical nurse, writes that, unable to find
work anywhere, she had no other way out but to sell her body. That is
the fate of many thousands of women in Japan.

The lot of women in Kuomintang China is a tragic one. Decades of
interference in the internal affairs of China by European and American
imperialists, the years of the Japanese invasion and of civil war have
devastated the country, drenched it with the blood of tens of millions
of men, women and children, condemned hundreds of millions of Chinese
toiling people to an existence of semi-starvation and misery.

The sanguinary war in China started by the reactionary Kuomintang
government with the direct military support of American imperialist
circles, is still going on, even though World War II has been over for
several years now.

Ruin, unemployment, famine reign in the Kuomintang-controlled areas.
Over half the arable land lies fallow, for the peasants have been
brought to such dire straits that they have no seed to plant.

The situation is no better in industry. Factories, mills and shops
keep dosing down, and masses of men and women workers are cast out into
the street, doomed to death by starvation. In May 1947, according to a
statement by a Chinese leader, over two thousand persons died of
starvation daily in the streets of Shanghai.

Unbridled terrorism against democratic and trade union leaders and
against various social organizations, assassinations of
progressively-minded people, fusillading of student demonstrations are
all typical of Kuomintang China. Naturally, there is no hint there of
elementary political and civil rights for women.

Family customs entangle Chinese women in a hopeless web, make them
dumb and obedient slaves to the head of the family, first the father,
then the husband and father-in-law. Polygamy and the sale of daughters
into slavery by their parents, are still practised.

Large numbers of young women and girls who are without homes, work
or any other means of support become prostitutes or slaves of the rich.

The percentage of women workers in industry in Kuomintang China is
very high and their condition is appalling. Women workers receive lower
wages than men for the same work. They work eleven, twelve and more
hours a day. The lot of Chinese working women is unbearably hard – no
labour protection regulations or medical aid, semi-starvation with mass
tuberculosis as a consequence, frightful housing conditions and
absolutely no rights at all. They are not allowed to read newspapers or
books, and there are even rules against laughing.

There is not a single social right women enjoy in colonies and
semi-colonial countries. They receive miserable wages for their work,
and are relegated to a position of inferiority in the family.
Semi-starvation from birth to death, hopeless ignorance, the absence of
elementary mother and child care, epidemics which carry off every other
child – that is the lot of women in these countries.

All this is an excellent illustration of the “civilizing” influence of the imperialist colonizers.

Only the achievement of freedom and independence can ensure real
progress for the colonial peoples. A vivid illustration of this is the
Mongolian People’s Republic, which, with the help of Soviet Russia,
inaugurated a, new life, took the path of free development.

At present women in the Mongolian People’s Republic take an active
part in all spheres of life. There is not a single branch of economy or
field of culture in which women do not participate.

About twenty-five years ago Mongolian women were granted full
equality. In 1947 seventy-five women were members of the highest
Mongolian organ of state power, the Small Hural, thirteen women were
members of the Presidium of the Small Hural and 1,193 were deputies to
local councils.

Of the leading cattle breeders honoured with the title “Merited
Cattle Breeder of the Republic,” 30.5 per cent are women. Thirty-eight
per cent of the industrial workers in the Republic are women, while in
Ulan-Bator, the capital, women comprise 73 per cent of the industrial
workers. Eighteen per cent of the schoolteachers and 70 per cent of the
medical workers are women. Women comprise 25 per cent of the college
students.

The law guarantees women equal pay for equal work and provides for
maternity leave. Women receive free medical aid, can place their
children in nurseries and kindergartens, and mothers of large families
receive special allowances.

Orders for valour in battle were awarded to sixty-five women for
their part in the war against the Japanese aggressors in 1945.
Mongolian women formed a Women’s Democratic organization with a
membership of 125,000 which is affiliated to the WIDF.

Time and again the peoples of colonial countries have risen against
the imperialist robbers, have taken to arms to fight for their
liberation.

The second world war further aggravated the crisis of imperialism’s
colonial system; it has brought about a further upsurge of the movement
for national liberation of the peoples in colonial and semi-colonial
countries.

The heroic fight the Chinese people and its People’s Liberation Army
are waging, and the magnificent victories they have won against the
American-supported Kuomintang government clearly show that the colonial
and semi-colonial peoples are up in arms, determined to fight it out to
the end with the imperialist invaders and their agents. The fight of
the Chinese people for national liberation is led by the Communist
Party of China. The People’s Liberation Army is waging a heroic and
successful war against the Chinese reactionaries and American
imperialists.

In a report to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
in January 1948, Mao Tse-tung, its Chairman, analyzing the current
situation in China, said that the revolutionary war of the Chinese
people had reached its turning point. The Chinese People’s Liberation
Army had repulsed the offensive of the Kuomintang reactionary army,
watchdog of the U.S.A., which was seven million strong at the time, and
had itself taken the offensive. Mao Tse-tung spoke of the mighty
resistance the People’s Liberation Army offered the forces of world
imperialism and Kuomintang reaction and declared that the Kuomintang
army was approaching its doom. The People’s Liberation Army was firmly
treading the path to victory, he said. It was the turning point – away
from the road to destruction along which the Kuomintang had been
leading the country in the twenty years of its counterrevolutionary
rule. It was the turning point from the extermination to which the
Chinese people had been subjected for over a century of imperialist
rule in China.

This was a great event, he continued – great because it was taking
place in a country with a population of 450,000,000 and because it was
heralding the certain victory of the people throughout the country. It
was a great event because it was taking place in the East – a part of
the world with a population of over one billion, a part of the world
inhabited by a half of mankind and suffering from the yoke of
imperialism.

All anti-imperialist forces in all countries of the East, concluded
Mao Tse-tung, must unite against imperialism and the reactionaries in
their own countries. They must set themselves the goal of liberating
the oppressed countries of the East, with their population of over a
billion.

In the People’s Democracies

The political, social and economic position of women is a true index
to the degree of democracy that exists in a country. Only in genuinely
democratic countries are women equal members of society, active
participants in their country’s political, economic and cultural life.

The victory of the new democracy, of people’s democracy, in a number
of countries in Central and Southeast Europe opened up to the people
wide fields of activity and opportunities to work for the good of their
countries, made it possible for these countries to start on the path to
Socialism.

The victory of the Fatherland Front in Bulgaria brought women
equality in social, economic, political and cultural life, and this
vitalized the boundless energy latent in them.

Like all the working people, the progressive women of Bulgaria
enthusiastically welcomed the five-year plan (1949-53) for the
development of the national economy adopted in December 1948. In the
villages women are playing an important part in forming cooperatives.
Women in all fields of endeavour – factory and office workers,
teachers, actors, artists, actresses – take an active part in labour
and culture brigades.

The number of women employed in industry is growing, and they are
prominent in the emulation movement for higher output per worker.

The Fatherland Front government attaches great importance to mother
and child care. Whereas in 1944 there were only 19 maternity hospitals
in the country, in 1948 there were over 150, and about 80,000 children
from 3 to 7 years of age were taken care of in nurseries and
kindergartens. Special dining rooms for children have been opened in
the cities. The number of special medical institutions and various
facilities for women is growing all the time.

The elections demonstrated women’s rapidly increasing part in
political activities in Bulgaria. Thirty-eight women are members of the
Grand National Assembly. Over 2,600 women took an active part in the
election campaign.

In an article entitled “The Pride of New Bulgaria,” Tsola Dragoicheva, Chairman of the National Women’s Union, said:

“The Bulgarian women see from the example of their Soviet sisters
who have travelled the glorious path of socialist construction for over
thirty years what boundless opportunities open up for women emancipated
from social oppression. We are aware that the sacrifices which the
Bulgarian people made in the trying years of struggle against fascism
and the despicable Coburg monarchy might all have been in vain, that
our fate might have proved a tragic one, had not the eldest brother of
the Slav peoples, the powerful Soviet Union, given us help. Bulgarian
women will never forget this.

“It is with deep love and gratitude that Bulgarian women utter the
name of the great man who saved their country from German enslavement
and who is defending the cause of peace and democracy all over the
world, the name of the leader and teacher of peoples – Stalin.”

Rumania, too, has a truly democratic regime for the first time in
her history. Women there now have equal rights with men in all fields –
economic, social and political.

The women of Rumania are active in the struggle for the
establishment and consolidation of democracy in their country and do
their part working for Rumania’s economic transformation.

Rumanian women take full advantage of the political equality granted
them by the new, democratic regime and they play an increasingly
prominent part in political life. At the last elections about 3,800,000
women came to the polls and voted for the democratic government.

All women who have reached the age of 21 have the right to vote, and
at 23 they are eligible for election to any government body. In the
last elections 20 women were elected to Parliament. Two ministers of
the republic are women. Anna Pauker, splendid daughter of the Rumanian
people who devoted her whole life to the fight for the interests of the
people, is Foreign Minister of the Rumanian People’s Republic.

Working women, peasant women, women engaged in intellectual pursuits
and housewives are united in the Federation of Democratic Women of
Rumania. One of the Federation’s aims is to rally all the women of the
country for the fight against the instigators of a new war. It sets
itself the task of rallying women for the effort to consolidate the
regime of democracy and to further the progress of the national
economy, of helping women to make the most of their newly-won equality,
of conducting extensive educational work among the masses, and of
promoting the proper education of children.

The Federation has before it the big task of helping speedily to
wipe out the accursed heritage of boyar rule. The fact that there was
not a single maternity hospital in the rural areas of old boyar Rumania
is an illustration of what this heritage represents. Within two years
the democratic Rumanian government established 508 maternity hospitals
and 539 children’s homes for orphans in the rural areas.

One of the main tasks of the Democratic Federation of Rumanian women
is to put an end to illiteracy and semi-literacy among women and young
people.

In all their work for the welfare of their rejuvenated and renovated
country Rumanian women take the women of the Soviet Union for their
example. Speaking at a meeting of women active in various public
organizations in Moscow in November 1947, Maria Sirbu, head of a
Rumanian women’s delegation, said:

“We have not seen even one hundredth part of what you and your
people have built, but we are already impressed by the respect shown
human labour in your country, by the high cultural standards of your
country, by the care and attention your children receive, by the way
women perform their duty to their country and their people.

“Soviet women, their heroic efforts, their inexhaustible enthusiasm
and strength in work were an inspiration to us in the days when we were
kept in prison and concentration camps, in the days of the hard fight
against reaction.”

The League of Polish Women heads the women’s democratic movement in
Poland. It takes a most active part in the political, economic and
cultural life of the country. The League has arranged thousands of
meetings of women. It has organized assistance to the government in the
restoration of Warsaw. Women all over Poland make contributions to the
fund for the reconstruction of the capital.

Polish democratic women are active in many fields. They take part in
the fight against profiteering, help the farmers in the sowing and
harvesting, work for the organization of cooperatives, establish public
laundries, tailor shops, dining rooms, women’s medical institutions,
vocational courses and schools for teaching adults to read and write.
Assisted by the democratic authorities and the whole Polish people,
women have been able to achieve a great deal.

The women of the other new, People’s Democracies are likewise making
the most of the true emancipation and equality they have gained.

The splendid way the woman question has been solved in the U.S.S.R.
is and will always be an inspiring example to all freedom-loving
peoples of the world, to the oppressed and enslaved women of all the
countries who are fighting for their emancipation.

In his greetings to Moscow on its eight-hundredth anniversary Comrade Stalin wrote:

“Moscow now is not only the source of inspiration for the
construction of new Soviet democracy, a democracy which rejects every
kind of inequality, direct or indirect, of citizens, sexes, races,
nations and which guarantees the right to work and the right to equal
pay for equal work. Moscow is at the same time the standard of the
struggle of all working people the world over, of all oppressed races
and nations, for their liberation from the rule of plutocracy and
imperialism.”

VII. Soviet Women in the Vanguard of the
Struggle Waged by Women in All Countries for Peace and Democracy
Against the Instigators of War

At the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union
Comrade Stalin appealed to all Soviet people to rise to repulse the
hated enemy. His appeal met with the fervent and unanimous response of
all patriots of the socialist homeland.

With the insight of genius Stalin expressed the firm conviction that
the peoples of Europe, enslaved by the German fascists, as well as the
freedom-loving peoples of the whole world, would unite to fight the
German invaders until the latter were completely defeated.

During the war, when the splendid daughters of the socialist
country, together with the whole people, were self-sacrificingly
defending the honour and independence of their homeland, Soviet women
began to work for the organization of international cooperation of
democratic women throughout the world for the struggle against fascism.

Mothers, wives and sisters of soldiers fighting at the front against
the inhuman fascist hordes, famed women factory and transport workers,
authors, actresses, and scientists, attended anti-fascist meetings at
which they spoke of the heroism displayed by Soviet women in the
defence of their country, and called upon freedom-loving women the
world over to fight against the common enemy.

On behalf of millions of Soviet women they appealed to the women of
England, America, France, to the women of the enslaved and oppressed
Slav countries of Europe which were groaning under the iron heel of
Hitlerism, to join forces in the fight against fascism.

“The time has come when we must all unite in order to destroy
bloodthirsty fascism utterly,” wrote Soviet women. They urged women the
world over to enlist in the holy war.

It was necessary to make women of all countries understand how much
they could accomplish if they fought against fascism actively, to make
them realize that by helping the Soviet people in their war against
fascism they would be helping themselves and their own countries, they
would be defending the honour and independence of their own peoples,
would be fighting for culture, for civilization, for the dignity of
women and the rights of mothers and children, for the happiness of
their children.

To the women in the German-occupied countries of Europe Soviet women said:

“Don’t lose heart! Fight, fan the flames of the popular war of
liberation! Justice is on our side! Victory will be ours!... Sabotage
Hitler’s war orders!... Prevent troop trains from getting through to
Russia!...”

The heroic efforts of the Soviet women and their appeal to
freedom-loving women throughout the world met with warm response abroad.

Women of other countries regarded the fight Soviet people were waging with hope; it heartened them and gave them strength.

Soviet women took the lead in the struggle women all over the world
were waging for democracy and progress. And that was natural, because
they were citizens of our wonderful, free country, brought up by the
Soviet socialist system, by our Communist Party, by our great and wise
leader Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

In every country, especially in the fascist-occupied states of
Europe, women, inspired by the heroism of the Soviet Army and of Soviet
women, joined forces and rose against the common enemy. Guided by the
Communist Parties, the women’s underground resistance movement grew and
gained in strength along with the entire front of the enslaved people’s
national-liberation movement. It was in the underground, in the
resistance movement against fascism, that new women’s organizations
were formed and proved their vitality and vigour.

The broad democratic movement of women during the war was not
limited to Europe and America. It extended to the colonial and
semi-colonial countries.

The selfless heroism, courage and grit of Soviet patriotic women
fascinated millions of freedom-loving women all over the world, lent
them strength and showed them how one should defend and love one’s
country.

The fight of the freedom-loving peoples against Hitlerism, cemented
as it was by common sacrifice and common victory, was bound to draw the
forces of democracy close together, was bound also to bring about
closer unity of freedom-loving women within the various countries and
on an international scale.

Unity of the democratic forces was all the more necessary because
even before the end of the war the reactionary forces in England and
the U.S.A. became increasingly busy, and their efforts were directed
primarily against the Soviet Union – the bulwark of democracy and the
decisive force in the war against Hitler Germany. The reactionaries
were anxious to save the fascist aggressors from utter destruction.

* * *

Before the war no mass women’s organizations existed either on an
international scale or in any single country. There were about a dozen
or so international feminist organizations of various kinds, most of
them reactionary and built on professional or religious lines, like the
Union of Christian Temperance, Catholic Leagues, Young Women’s
Association, League of Country Women, University Women’s Association.
The membership of these organizations was small, and they used
demagogic slogans in order to divert working women from the real fight
for their equality and democratic rights. No wonder all these
associations speedily collapsed when confronted with a formidable war
danger. The “Women’s International Organizations Contact Committee,”
which was connected with the League of Nations, disappeared together
with the latter. The extremely conservative and reactionary
“International Alliance of Women Voters” was not heard of during the
war. In some countries members of the Alliance supported the fascists.
The collapse of this type of women’s organization was inevitable in the
period of great trials which fell to the lot of hundreds of millions of
people, for they did not have the support of the masses of working
women; their interests and needs were alien to them. The moral and
political influence of these organizations was negligible.

* * *

After the enemy was defeated the conditions were ripe for the
establishment of an organization to keep alive the wartime unity of
democratic women of different countries and enable them to take part in
solving the new, post-war problems facing the peoples of the world.

In June 1945 an Initiative Committee was formed to prepare for and
convoke a Women’s World Congress. It consisted of representatives of
the U.S.S.R., France, Spain, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Belgium,
Italy, China and England.

Soviet women, whose efforts on behalf of democratic women’s unity
date back to the days of the war, when they issued their fervent
appeals to women the world over to unite for the joint struggle against
fascism, took a most active part in the work of the Initiative
Committee for a World Women’s Congress.

The World Women’s Congress met in Paris on November 26, 1945, and
was attended by 850 delegates and guests representing 181 women’s
organizations in 42 countries in all parts of the world.

The Congress discussed such questions as how to preserve and extend
the democratic gains of the peoples, how to rally all forces to
consolidate the victory by establishing lasting and just peace among
the nations, how to work to extirpate fascism, how to fight for
democratic rights in general and for women in particular, how to
achieve genuine, not merely formal, equality, and how to help the
oppressed and enslaved women of the colonies.

The Congress established a new international democratic
organization, the Women’s International Democratic Federation, which
joined the serried ranks of the democratic front of the peoples of the
world.

The Congress elected executive bodies: a Council, Executive
Committee, Secretariat and Auditing Committee. The U.S.S.R. has five
members and three alternate members in the Council, which is made up of
representatives of all the countries that were represented at the
Congress. The Congress reviewed what democratic women had done to bring
about the defeat of fascism during the war, and adopted a Constitution
and a Program for the Women’s International Democratic Federation.

The women’s international organization set itself the task of
drawing millions and millions of women into the fight for the complete
annihilation of fascism and of the fascist ideology, for the
establishment of a just, stable and lasting peace among nations and for
the prevention of new aggression, for political, economic and other
social rights for women of all races and nationalities in all countries
of the world, bearing in mind that there can be no real democracy in a
country in which women do not enjoy full political and economic
equality.

The Congress stressed the necessity for strengthening the unity of
the peoples of democratic countries, the unity which arose during World
War II and brought the United Nations victory over the enemies of
humanity, the German fascists and Japanese imperialists.

The decisions of the Paris Congress were and remain powerful means
of rallying and uniting the democratic forces in the international
women’s movement.

The Congress issued an appeal to women all over the world and adopted the following oath:

“Before returning to our countries and to our families, we solemnly
vow to facilitate the development of this powerful women’s
organization, which came into being after the termination of the second
world war.

“We solemnly vow to defend the economic, juridical and social rights of women.

“We solemnly vow to fight for the creation of conditions necessary
for the happy and harmonious development of our children and future
generations.

“We solemnly vow to fight untiringly for the complete destruction of
fascism in all its manifestations, and for the establishment of a real
democracy throughout the world.

“We solemnly vow to fight untiringly to secure a lasting peace
throughout the world – the only guarantee of the happiness of our
hearths and homes and of the well-being of our children.”

After the Congress the Federation proceeded to put into effect its
resolutions, to live up to its historic mission – that of heading the
struggle for peace and democracy carried on by the various national
women’s organizations.

Women of the Soviet Union are in the vanguard of the struggle of
women all over the world for the lofty and noble aims proclaimed by the
Women’s World Congress. They take the lead in the efforts to strengthen
cooperation among women of all freedom-loving nations.

The WIDF has become one of the biggest mass organizations which
comprise the democratic front of the peoples of the world. The
Federation enjoys increasing influence and prestige among the masses of
women, for it concerns itself with problems of vital interest to all
democratic women, problems resulting from the complicated and tense
international situation which has developed since the end of the war.

The Federation’s Executive Committee and Council have discussed at
their meetings the ways and means of rallying women of all countries to
fight for peace and democracy, against the survivals of fascism and
fascist ideology, and against aggressive reaction.

The overshadowing fact characterizing this post-war period is that
while the general crisis of the capitalist system, which is growing
ever more acute, is undermining and weakening the forces of the
reactionary, imperialist camp, the forces of the democratic,
anti-imperialist camp are growing stronger. As a result of the second
world war the relation of forces in the political arena is developing
in favour of Socialism.

World War I gave rise to conditions favourable to the victory of the
Great October Socialist Revolution, which, for the first time in the
history of mankind, established Socialism on one-sixth of the earth. A
quarter of a century later, in consequence of World War II, more links
were broken in the chain of capitalist countries. A number of states of
Central and Southeastern Europe dropped out of the imperialist system.
New, people’s democratic regimes arose in Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Albania. In a surprisingly short period
these countries have carried out bold progressive social and economic
reforms and taken firm steps towards Socialism. These accomplishments
were possible because they were wholeheartedly backed by the masses of
the people.

The capitalist world has altered substantially. Of the six
imperialist Great Powers, as they were called, Germany, Japan and Italy
no longer count. France has been greatly weakened and lost her former
importance. The United States of America and Great Britain are the only
imperialist Great Powers left, and Britain’s position has been
seriously undermined. She is falling more and more under the sway of
her trans-Atlantic rival and competitor.

The American monopolists, the real rulers of America today, grew
fabulously rich during the war and are striving to take advantage of
the military and economic might of the U.S.A. to extend their rule to
the whole world.

“In the post-war conditions the imperialists of the U.S.A. are
bidding for the role of world gendarme, for the role of suppressor of
the freedom and independence of nations. “The rapacious imperialism of
the Americans,” as Lenin called it, is out to gain world supremacy, to
enslave and subjugate all the countries of the world. The American
imperialists are clearly aiming to take the place of fascist Germany
and Japan and are preparing for a new imperialist war,” said Comrade
Suslov in his speech at the memorial meeting in Moscow on the 24th
anniversary of Lenin’s death. The warmongers are openly calling for an
attack upon peaceable countries, in the first place upon the Soviet
Union. With the aim, as they say, of “combating Communism,” American
imperialists are organizing armed intervention against the
freedom-loving peoples of Greece, China, Indonesia, and are interfering
in the internal affairs of other countries. They resort to blackmail,
threats, economic and political pressure in order to achieve their
aggressive aims.

It is now becoming ever clearer to all the peoples that the
notorious “Truman Doctrine” and the Marshall Plan, which is a variety
of it, were prompted by the American imperialists’ desire to delay the
threat of imminent economic crisis, which the Wall Street bosses fear
so much, and at the same time to extend the power of the dollar to many
countries of the world, to throw their noose over the peoples of Europe
and Asia.

It is due to the assistance of the American reactionaries that
Franco’s fascist regime still exists in Spain, that a fascist regime is
being forced on Greece, that civil war rages in China, that fascist
elements are becoming more and more active in Britain, France, Italy.
The American imperialists are preserving Germany’s industrial war
potential. In pursuit of their imperialist aims the U.S.A. reactionary
government circles are violating the Allied agreements on Germany,
preventing Germany’s demilitarization and democratic reconstruction and
the formation of a central democratic government for the whole of
Germany. They are dismembering that country by forming dwarf German
states entirely dependent on the American monopolies.

To consolidate the victory won over fascism and to achieve security
and peace throughout the world on the basis of unity and mutual
cooperation – that is the immediate task facing the freedom-loving
nations, the democratic forces of the world.

The anti-imperialist democratic camp is closing its ranks in the
fight against the American imperialists, their agents and accomplices.

All the peoples want peace. None of them want a repetition of the
horrors of war. They are becoming more and more aware of the necessity
of carrying on an organized, united struggle to preserve the national
independence and sovereignty of their countries, in defence of their
rights and of the cause of peace against the instigators of a new war.
The Communist Parties, steeled and tested in the fire of hard battles
against fascism and trusted by the broad masses of the people, are in
the van of the struggle against imperialism. The offensive of the
People’s Liberation Army of China against the reactionary Kuomintang
forces, the formation of a provisional democratic government in Greece,
the Popular Front in Italy, the wave of strikes and mass demonstrations
that swept France and Italy, and many other events are eloquent
evidence of the strengthening of the democratic and anti-imperialist
camp all over the world.

This camp derives most of its strength from the great Soviet Union
which constitutes its vanguard, and also from the New Democracies. The
increasing resistance offered by the democratic anti-imperialist camp
to the schemes of the aggressors and warmongers has a powerful support
in the great Soviet Union and in its foreign policy. The Soviet Union
is a true and consistent champion of the freedom and independence of
nations, big and small, it stands guard over the interests of humanity
and civilization.

Soviet women clearly see what their task is at the present juncture,
when reaction is on the offensive and fascist elements are growing more
active, when the elementary democratic liberties are being violated and
progressive organizations and people persecuted, when attempts are
being made to split the forces of democracy and to weaken the
democratic front of freedom-loving peoples of the world. They are
working hard to extend and strengthen the ranks of the Federation, to
make it and its national sections a growing factor in the struggle for
peace, for democratic gains, against the instigators of a new war,
against international reaction.

Our representatives who take part in the work of the WIDF, who
attend its Congresses and Executive Committee meetings and engage in
the daily work of its governing bodies, are guided by the mandate of
Soviet women enjoining them to base their activities on the Stalin
foreign policy of the Soviet State, which is directed against the
warmongers and upholds peace and democracy.

The women’s democratic movement headed by the Federation is an
integral part of the general democratic movement of the whole world.
The Federation and its affiliated organizations, together with the
international democratic trade union and youth organizations, conducted
a mass anti-Franco campaign. Together with the International
Association of Democratic Jurists the Secretariat of the Federation
sent a commission of lawyers to Spain to investigate the condition of
political prisoners held in Franco prisons.

In 1946, as a result of the protest voiced by the WIDF and its
affiliated organizations, a protest which had the support of world
public opinion, the death sentence of three Spanish anti-fascist women
was reversed. In order better to organize the fight against Franco, the
national sections of the Federation in Poland, Hungary, France, Finland
and other countries formed relief committees for the Spanish democrats
and have made arrangements to help Spanish women political prisoners.
These committees have collected large sums of money to assist Spanish
anti-fascists.

Women determined to fight for the extirpation of the remnants of
fascism and fascist ideology demand of their governments, those which
still maintain diplomatic relations with Franco, that they break with
Franco Spain and enforce an economic boycott against it.

The WIDF is conducting a campaign in defence of the heroic Greek
people who are fighting against the monarcho-fascist regime. Protests
against foreign intervention in Greece were sent to the Greek
ambassador in Paris and to the governments of the U.S.A. and Great
Britain.

The Federation initiated a movement against the suppression of the
freedom and independence of the peoples of Indonesia and Viet-Nam.

The Federation and its national organizations are conducting a
campaign demanding the unconditional fulfilment of the United Nations
decisions on armaments reduction and on the prohibition of the atomic
weapon and of war propaganda.

Inasmuch as the fate of peace in the post-war world depends to a
great extent on the correct solution of the problem of Germany, the
Federation, on behalf of its millions of members, demands the
implementation of the Potsdam decisions, effective demilitarization and
denazification of Germany, the formation of a single central German
government and the establishment of four-power control of the Ruhr
industry. Twice the WIDF sent a commission to Germany, which
investigated the condition of German women and the development of the
democratic women’s movement in the Soviet and French zones of
occupation. It also visited the American and British sectors of Berlin.
Despite the Federation’s repeated requests, the Anglo-American
occupation authorities refused to permit the commission to visit their
zones.

The commission found that in the American, British and French
occupation zones the position as regards denazification and democratic
reconstruction is very unsatisfactory, that, in line with the wishes of
the American imperialists and with their plans for a new war, the
occupation authorities hinder the democratic development of Germany and
persecute the democratic organizations of the German people. They have
been interfering with and hindering the activities of women’s
anti-fascist committees and the democratic union of women, at the same
time encouraging and supporting reactionary women’s organizations.

The same commission visited the Soviet zone of occupation and found
that genuine democratic changes had been accomplished there, that the
Soviet occupation authorities were carrying out in practice the
provisions for denazification and for the democratic reconstruction of
Germany, and that in the Soviet zone the conditions had been created
for the development of democratic organizations, including women’s
organizations.

The U.S S.R. is a country of genuine popular government. It is
therefore deeply interested in the triumph of democracy in Germany and
is doing everything in its power for the establishment of a democratic
system in all of Germany.

In the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany the anti-fascist
committees of German women started a movement to unite all women’s
democratic forces. In March 1947, a congress of German women was held
in Berlin, at which the Union of Democratic Women of Germany was
founded.

In a Manifesto to German women the Union states:

“The Union wants to preserve peace, to defeat fascism, militarism
and reaction; it wants to work for the unity of Germany by taking an
active part in the political life of the country; to help towards
rehabilitation and to reduce poverty, to settle legal, economic and
social problems concerning women on the basis of equal rights and
obligations; to lay the foundation for a healthy and cultured family
life.”

995 delegates from the Soviet zone and 114 from the western zones
attended the congress. Most of the delegates from the western zones had
to travel to the congress secretly in order to elude the police of the
Anglo-American occupation authorities which refused them permission to
go.

The delegates all spoke of the democratic measures of the Soviet
military administration. They acclaimed the organization of the Union
and demanded unity in the women’s movement.

Since its foundation the Union of Democratic Women of Germany has
grown considerably. Its membership runs into hundreds of thousands and
it has its representatives in almost all the German central organs of
administration in the Soviet zone. Members of the Union also work on
housing and food committees and are active in the fight against
profiteering.

The most immediate political task the Union sets itself is the fight
to preserve peace and achieve the unity of Germany, to prevent the
splitting of Germany, which is being pushed by the U.S.A. imperialists
and their agents, the Right-wing Socialists.

Convinced that the character and trend of the women’s democratic
movement in Germany is of vital importance to the peace-loving nations,
Soviet women, through their representatives in the WIDF, are doing all
they can to direct this movement into the proper channel and make it an
integral part of the united anti-imperialist and democratic camp, of
the camp which is fighting against the aggressive plans of American
imperialism, against its designs to destroy the freedom and sovereignty
of nations.

Acting in accordance with the wishes of all Soviet women, the Soviet
delegation in the Federation exposes the warmongers and explains to the
broad masses of the women in foreign countries that the war scare
created by the American militarists and the war propaganda they are
conducting may bring mankind new disasters.

At the Stockholm session of the WIDF Executive Committee in
September 1947 the Soviet delegation declared that all war propaganda,
whatever its form, must be condemned as a menace to society, and that
those who carryon war propaganda should be brought to trial and
punished severely as criminals. The ideological weapons of war, our
delegation said, must be put under a ban as effective as the ban
mankind is demanding for the atomic weapon.

These demands which our representatives formulated at the session of
the WIDF Executive Committee were fully in line with the Soviet
Government’s foreign policy. Just then the Soviet delegation at the UN
General Assembly submitted comprehensive material exposing the
warmongers and demanded that warmongering should be made a criminal
offence. All progressive mankind, the common people the world over,
were grateful to the Soviet delegation for its declaration.

During the war the example of the heroic deeds of Soviet women and
their fervent appeals roused millions of women in the fascist-enslaved
countries to join the fight. Similarly, Soviet women in the WIDF are in
the vanguard of the fight for the achievement of the Federation’s task.
Soviet women play a leading part in the world democratic women’s
movement, for the Soviet Union is the base and bulwark of the
anti-imperialist democratic camp. The weight and influence of the
Soviet Union in international affairs and the high moral and political
prestige it enjoys among the freedom-loving peoples of the whole world
are the principal reasons for the success of Soviet women in their
activities in the international arena and for the sincere affection
which women the world over feel for our countrywomen.

The Soviet women’s delegations which took part in the work of the
Paris Congress, the Executive Committee and Council have worked
persistently to strengthen the Federation and augment its ranks, to
make its national sections into a powerful factor in the struggle for
peace, for democratic achievements, for the social and economic rights
of millions of women in capitalist countries. The Soviet Women’s
Anti-Fascist Committee, which was formed during the Great Patriotic
War, plays an important part in this work.

Thanks to the contacts Soviet women maintain with women’s
organizations abroad, they have been able to exercise considerable
influence on the development of the international democratic women’s
movement. Through the extensive activities of their Anti-Fascist
Committee Soviet women bring to the women in foreign countries
knowledge of the advantages of the Soviet system, of the achievements
of Soviet women, their part in the political and economic life of the
country, and expose the slander and lies disseminated about the Soviet
Union abroad.

The Committee receives letters and telegrams from women abroad, and
all of them express their affection for the Soviet people and their
desire to continue and to strengthen their friendship with Soviet women.

Here, for instance, is a message sent by French women on the first anniversary of Victory Day:

“We greet Soviet women and your entire people whose share in the
destruction of fascism was so great. French women thank you for having
contributed so much to the fight against fascism and for having helped
us. Our two nations are joined by friendship, and in the future this
friendship will grow still stronger.”

A representative of women’s organizations of India wrote:

“We must strengthen the connections and extend the exchange of
information between the women of U.S.S.R. and the women of India. This
will help the women of India in their struggle for the right to live.”

Jeanette S. Turner, Vice-President of the Congress of American
Women, made the following statement to the press when she was leaving
the U.S.S.R. at the end of October 1947:

“My visit has permitted me to see and observe the great strides the
U.S.S.R. has made toward post-war recovery – I have met and spoken with
trade unionists, farmers, intellectuals of all professions and I have
gained an insight into that which has made the Soviet Union great –
namely, the deep love the Soviet peoples have for their land – their
undying patriotism, their faith and trust in the leadership of Joseph
Stalin; the manner in which they cherish the socialist ideals – the
Soviet State.” This statement exposes the lies and slander spread about
our country by reactionaries.

The bonds between Soviet women and the women of the People’s Democracies are especially extensive.

Women’s democratic organizations of these countries are extremely
interested in the experience Soviet women have had working in factories
and on collective farm fields; they strive to emulate the work of our
women; they introduce labour emulation and shock work in industry, form
women’s building brigades for the rehabilitation of towns and villages
destroyed during the war, organize children’s institutions modelled on
Soviet children’s institutions.

The women’s organizations of Mongolia and Korea requested Soviet
women’s sponsorship in joining the Women’s International Democratic
Federation. Many women ask for invitations to the Soviet Union and
invite Soviet women’s delegations to visit their countries.

Visits of foreign women’s delegations to the U.S.S.R. and of Soviet
women to foreign countries have helped to strengthen the friendly
relations, and working contacts between Soviet and foreign women’s
democratic organizations. They have enabled women of all countries to
see for themselves the advantages of the Soviet system, and this has
helped to explode the slanderous, anti-Soviet lies invented by the
enemies of democracy.

The magnificent historic achievements and rights gained by the
working people of the first Socialist State in the world serve as an
inspiring example to the masses of women in capitalist countries.

Since the struggle between the imperialist and anti-democratic camp
on the one hand and the anti-imperialist and democratic camp on the
other is growing ever more acute, Soviet women halve been demanding
that the Federation should combat the intrigues of the reactionaries
with still greater perseverance and determination, that it should
expose the warmongers before the millions of women all over the world,
and should actively and consistently cooperate with other democratic
organizations. Soviet women demand that the Federation should fight
more resolutely to augment and consolidate the ranks of democracy, that
it should imbue the champions of peace and democracy with faith in
their own strength.

Democratically-minded women are aware that unity is a most important
condition for success in the fight for peace and for their political
and economic rights. It is by no means fortuitous that the forces of
reaction are intriguing against the unity of the women’s democratic
movement.

The progress of the preparations for the First WIDF Congress, held
in November 1945, showed that the democratic women’s movement was
rapidly gaining in scope. And reactionary elements did their best even
then to hinder the formation of an international democratic
organization of women or at least to delay its formation. Thus, British
delegates on the Initiative Committee insisted that the program of the
international women’s organization be restricted to economic matters.
They even proposed to eliminate so burning a question as that of the
fight against fascism, on the pretext that it might give the whole
organization a Communist character. The British delegates asserted that
in their country fascism never existed and never would. But these
assertions are clearly at variance with the steadily increasing
activities of fascists on the British Isles. Oswald Mosley, the leader
of the British fascists, does not confine himself to fascist
propaganda, as everyone knows. His toughs organize anti-Jewish pogroms
in various towns of England and fight workers’ organizations.

The representatives of Britain on the Initiative Committee advised
against haste in calling the congress and persisted in trying to get it
postponed. In this manner they hoped to hinder the formation of the
WIDF.

At the congress, too, the British delegation strove importunately to
form blocs of representatives of various countries which would push
through their proposals and thus dictate their will to the congress,
but these manoeuvres did not succeed. It is a fact that from
its very birth adversaries and enemies of the WIDF began to undermine
it. But the various democratic women’s associations worked
energetically for its growth and progress.

The growing unity and mutual understanding of the members of the
WIDF shows that this organization possesses vitality and vigour. Ever
larger masses of women are joining it, and not only national but
international government and social organizations are beginning to
recognize it. The future in the women’s movement definitely belongs to
the WIDF.

Reactionary elements have been increasing their efforts to undermine
the WIDF. The centre of these activities has now shifted from London to
Washington.

The reactionaries foam with rage as they watch the growth of the
forces of world democracy, and of the WIDF, which is one of its
detachments. They are trying to destroy the democratic women’s
movement, to stop its development by undermining it from within. They
want to use the women’s movement for their own ends and therefore
encourage the activities of reactionary feminist organizations. The
forces of reaction in Britain, U.S.A., France and other capitalist
countries are working hard to divert women from the struggle for the
aims and tasks which most closely concern them.

In the woman’s movement of the U.S.A. and Britain reactionary
elements prevail. They keep on attempting to form new international
organizations, demagogically using the slogans of peace and democracy
in order to attract the attention of women and divert them from the
fight for genuine peace and genuine democracy.

Repeated attempts have been made to form a new international women’s
organization of a reactionary bent, in which the Anglo-American bloc
would play the leading role and which would speak in the UN in the name
of “world womanhood.”

Reactionary Catholic forces, the Vatican especially, are likewise working to gain influence on the masses of women.

In 1947 the Vatican convoked two “international women’s congresses”:
the International Council of Catholic Girls and the International Union
of Women’s Catholic Leagues. The keynote of those meetings was
“glorification” of motherhood and the appeal to women to stay home and
take no part in public and political affairs. The Pope spoke at the
congresses, and his speeches were as reactionary as might be expected
from the highest church dignitary.

Hundreds of millions of men and women all over the world are astir
today. They have become active in the political struggle. And it is no
wonder the reactionary forces, including the Catholic church and the
Pope in Rome, have taken fright, no wonder they are trying to divert
women from public activity and to limit their interests to the home.

Obedient to the will of their imperialist masters, the Right-wing
Socialists are doing everything they can to break up the unity of the
working class and undermine the foundations of the international
democratic front of the peoples of the world. The Right-wing
Socialists, the most dangerous agents of imperialism in the labour
movement and traitors to the interests of their countries, are trying
to revive the Second International, defunct since the first world war,
and to split the World Federation of Trade Unions. They are also trying
to form an international organization of Socialist women for the
purpose of splitting the democratic women’s movement and the WIDF,
which is leading this movement. With this aim in view a conference of
Socialist women was held in Zurich in the summer of 1947, and later
another one was held in Antwerp, at which it was decided to form an
international women’s Socialist organization. A provisional executive
committee of this future organization was set up.

It is now clear to the whole world that the Right-wing Socialists of
France, headed by Leon Blum, have sold themselves lock, stock and
barrel to the American monopolists, that they are working as agents of
American imperialism in Europe, primarily in France itself. And that is
why the Right-wing Socialist women of France are waging so furious a
battle against the democratic women’s organizations of France.

In their attempts to divert women from public activity and from the
democratic movement the reactionary elements in the various countries,
primarily in the U.S.A., Britain, France and Italy, urge women at their
congresses and conferences, and also through the press, radio and
theatre, to return to hearth and home.

The reactionaries aim to weaken the influence of the WIDF and to
lure women away from the active struggle against the instigators of a
new war, from the fight for political rights and for the betterment of
the economic position of millions of working women and mothers
throughout the world.

However, these attempts are doomed to failure. The prestige and
influence of the Women’s International Democratic Federation is growing
steadily. This can be seen from the increased activity of the
affiliated national organizations, from the fight they are waging for
peace. In November 1948 mass meetings were held throughout France in
support of the Soviet delegation’s proposals at the third session of
the UN General Assembly. The Italian women’s organization sent to the
UN a petition calling for peace, signed by three million women.
Petitions supporting the Soviet proposals for the prohibition of the
atomic weapon and for a reduction of armaments were signed by 2,500,000
Czechoslovakian women, 2,110,000 Bulgarian women, 5,000,000 German
women. Signatures were also obtained in England, Belgium, New Zealand,
Holland and other countries.

The women of fighting Greece constantly feel the support of the
Federation’s national organizations, which systematically send
medicines, food and clothing for Greek women and children. The
Federation tirelessly exposes before the whole world the crimes being
committed by the Anglo-American imperialists against democratic Greece
and other freedom-loving peoples of the world. Women’s organizations in
France and Holland have held meetings of protest against the bloodshed
perpetrated by the French and Dutch governments in their efforts to
suppress the freedom-loving peoples of Viet-Nam and Indonesia.

The women of France, England, Italy, Austria and other countries
protest strongly against the “Marshall Plan” which is ruining and
enslaving their countries, destroying their national industries, their
freedom and sovereignty, and transforming them into bridgeheads for new
war adventures.

The Second Congress of the WIDF, held in Budapest at the end of
1948, played an important part in mustering the forces of women in the
struggle for peace.

The speeches delivered at the congress by delegates from various
countries of Europe, Asia and America, from Republican Spain,
Australia, Cuba, Korea and Iran showed that the masses everywhere are
offering increasing resistance to the offensive of the monopolists and
the intrigues of the warmongers.

Delegates from many countries in all parts of the globe spoke with
deep gratitude of the Soviet Government’s peace policy, of the great
Soviet Union which is consistently leading all the progressive forces
of mankind in the defence of peace, tirelessly exposing the instigators
of a new war, strengthening the ties of friendship among nations and
states.

Jeanette Vermerche, representative of the Union of French women,
expressed the feelings of millions of democratic women when she said at
the Congress:

“We believe in the Soviet Union, the strongest force for peace, for
we know that the people in power cannot want war.... We also know from
experience that if the Soviet Union is attacked it will fight with the
courage of a lion unto victory, instilling courage in the hearts of all
who are fighting for the common cause of the peoples.”

As she concluded her speech she unfurled the banner which the French
women sent to the women of the Soviet Union. The inscription read:
“French mothers will never give their sons for a war against the Soviet
Union.”

The congress enthusiastically applauded the words of the Chairman of
the WIDF, Eugenie Cotton, words which expressed the love of millions of
common people for the great homeland of Socialism.

“The fact that the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe have
a feeling of attachment for the Soviet Union,” she said, “is not the
result of pressure from Moscow, as the reactionaries try to make the
peoples of the world believe; it is the result of deep gratitude to the
country which gave the blood of millions of its people for the common
victory over fascism. It is the expression of gratitude of millions of
men and women to the great people who made the revolution in 1917, who
were the first to begin the fight to ensure that the power really
belongs to the people. To the countries to which England and France
brought “Munich.” the Soviet Union brought liberation. The U.S.S.R. is
the country where the great dream of Socialism which lives in the
hearts of all workers of the world – men and women – has been
translated into reality.”

“Women of all countries!” says the Manifesto issued by the congress.
“We have a great responsibility to our children, to our peoples, to
mankind and to history. And if all of us women – and we are half of
mankind – close our ranks and fight the warmongers, there will be no
war.”

The Manifesto calls upon the women of capitalist countries to defend
their democratic gains, for without democracy there can be no peace.
The Manifesto calls upon the women of colonial and dependent countries
to continue the fight against imperialism, for the national
independence of their countries.

On behalf of 56 countries the delegates to the Second World Women’s
Congress declared that the 80,000,000 women they represent “will fight
even harder and more staunchly for peace, for democracy, for the
security and independence of the nations.”

The decisions of the Second World Women’s Congress and the work to
carry out these decisions will further consolidate the ranks of
progressive women the world over and contribute to the common struggle
of the democratic forces for peace and democracy, against the
instigators of a new war.

Soviet women play the leading part in strengthening the whole
international women’s front, in uniting the efforts of democratic women
the world over in their struggle for peace.

Soviet women believe it is more important now than ever before for
the Federation to multiply its efforts in the struggle against the
imperialist forces, in the struggle for a lasting peace, for democratic
liberties and women’s rights. Only in this way can the Federation
justify the hopes put in it by millions of democratic women. Democratic
women’s organizations must wage an even more determined struggle
against the main forces of the imperialist camp, against American
imperialism and its British and French allies.

Mothers and wives the world over, all the national organizations of
the Federation must make it their task to expose the warmongers’
machinations, the increasing activities of fascist organizations and
the offensive of reaction against the democratic achievements of the
working people and their organizations.

In its daily work the WIDF must bear in mind that it is absolutely
necessary for the cause of peace, democracy and progress, in the
interests of all the nations, further to strengthen the democratic
movement.

In all their activities, in all their work to strengthen the
democratic movement, Soviet women always and forcibly stress that the
Federation and its affiliated organizations must not at present confine
themselves to lodging protests. There must be more action in their
struggle against the forces of reaction, and they must take the
offensive more often. They must work more energetically to rally the
democratic forces in every country, to expose the lying inventions of
the reactionary press about the Soviet Union and the New Democracies –
sentinels of peace and defenders of the national independence and
sovereignty of all peoples and countries, big and small. They must
rouse hundreds of millions of women for the struggle against the
instigators of a new world war.

The WIDF was founded because millions of women willed it and many
millions of women have rallied to its standard. Not all women’s
organizations, however, are members of the Federation yet. As
heretofore, the Federation is faced with the task of working with might
and main to unite women’s organizations within the various countries
and to draw ever broader strata of democratically-minded women into its
own ranks.

There is a vast amount of work for the Federation to do in the
women’s movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. It must
consolidate that movement and help it to take an active part in the
struggle for the independence and sovereignty of the colonial peoples
and for their social and economic progress. The upsurge of the
national-liberation movement in these countries augments the forces of
the anti-imperialist and democratic camp in the post-war world.

The WIDF exists and is growing stronger despite the attempts to
undermine it from within, or to substitute for it a reactionary
international women’s organization. It has been founded to work for the
realization of the aspirations of hundreds of millions of women all
over the world, and it is performing this task.

It is strong not only by virtue of its numbers but by virtue of the
fact that it has in its ranks women who travelled the glorious path of
struggle against fascism in the years of hard trials and who are now
taking an active part in solving post-war problems. The Federation’s
main source of strength is the fact that it has inscribed lofty aims on
its banner, and that the fight for the realization of these aims will
help to ensure peace among the nations and a happy future for coming
generations.

It is vital to the interests of peace, democracy, progress, to the
interests of all the peoples, that the international women’s democratic
movement be further strengthened. Referring to the unprecedented rise
in the activity of the masses and of their striving for peace, Comrade
Zhdanov said in his address on the Twenty-Ninth Anniversary of the
Great October Socialist Revolution:

“Millions of working people are organizing in order to defend the
cause of peace in all countries. I am referring to the significance of
the World Federation of Trade Unions, which is conducting an active
policy of international cooperation among the workers, the Women’s
International Democratic Federation and the World Federation of
Democratic youth.... The forces of democracy are growing, and that is
the guarantee that the cause of peace will triumph.”

Backed by the growing forces of democracy, by the joint actions of
freedom-loving women of the world, of the organized working class and
democratic youth, and by the sympathy and support of many millions of
women, the Federation must in future too hold firmly the banner of
struggle for the lofty aims for which it was formed.

Soviet women are fully confident that the WIDF will take the lead in
the democratic women’s movement of resistance to the imperialist
aggressors, and that it will rally and unite the forces of
freedom-loving women all over the world under its banner. It will not
yield to threats and will adhere resolutely to its anti-imperialist,
democratic stand in the defence of peace and democracy, of national
sovereignty, of freedom and independence for the peace-loving countries.

The forces of democracy are great. The peoples are eager to work
together, they want unity and the establishment of a democratic peace.
They want freedom and social justice. These ideals of progressive
mankind are expressed most fully and defended most consistently by the
great Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union is a staunch and consistent defender of peace,
democracy, freedom and the independence of all the nations of the
world, just as it was before the war. Comrade Zhdanov said: “As the
embodiment of a new and superior social system, the Soviet Union
reflects in its foreign policy the aspirations of progressive mankind,
which desires enduring peace and has nothing to gain from a new war
hatched by capitalism. The Soviet Union is a staunch champion of the
liberty and independence of all nations, and a foe of national and
racial oppression and colonial exploitation in any shape or form.”48
And that is why the most malicious attacks of American and all other
reactionaries are directed primarily against the Soviet Union, the
country which stands guard over peace and confidently counters the
attempts of the U.S.A. to achieve world supremacy.

All men and women who value the democratic liberties and peace among
nations, the vital interests of their people and their country,
regardless of their position in society, political affiliations,
nationality or race, must wage a most energetic and determined fight
against the reactionaries who slander the U.S.S.R., against those who
provoke quarrels and sow suspicion among nations, against those who
advocate fresh bloodshed and are feverishly preparing for a new war.

The stronger the democratic front the less chance reaction has to destroy the democratic gains and start a new war.

The declaration of the conference of nine Communist Parties of
European countries pointed out that the only correct and certain way of
struggle for the toilers and all other democratically-minded people is
for them to unite all their forces against the warmongers, against the
imperialist enslavement of nations, for the freedom and independence of
all the countries of the world. Soviet women are convinced that this
program, which accords with the vital interests of all freedom-loving
peoples of the world, is the foundation for a consistent, firm and
resolute struggle of democratic women the world over.

Citizens of the most democratic and peace-loving country in the
world which consistently and steadfastly opposes the aggressive foreign
policy of the imperialist circles in capitalist countries and the
instigators of a new world war, the women of the great Soviet Union
have a special part to perform in strengthening the international
women’s democratic movement.

Dolores Ibarruri said of the Soviet women:

“Soviet women are our pride, the pride of their people, the pride and model of women the world over,”

True daughters of our great victorious people, reared by the
Communist Party and the great Stalin, Soviet women are the most
consistent fighters in the ranks of the Federation for peace and
democracy, for freedom and the independence of the peoples. They fight
courageously and resolutely against reaction, against the imperialist
warmongers, bearing in mind that the union and solidarity of all women
fighting for democracy and peace is a powerful blow to the imperialist
and anti-democratic camp.

Conclusion

Remarkable new achievements of the Soviet people marked the year
1948. The program for the third, decisive year of the five-year plan
was fulfilled 106% in industry, with output 18% above the pre-war
level. Workers in socialist agriculture also accomplished great things.
Over seven billion poods of grain were harvested in 1948, which is
almost as much as was harvested before the war.

Thanks to these achievements in the national economy the conditions
were created for a further rise of the material and cultural standards
of our people. The financial reform and abolition of rationing
considerably raised the standard of living of the Soviet people.

On March 1, 1949, retail prices of food and manufactured goods were
again cut by decision of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. and
the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B). This decision was another
manifestation of the great solicitude of the Party, the Government and
Comrade Stalin personally for the welfare of the Soviet people.

Soviet women play an outstanding part in the effort for the
rehabilitation and development of the country’s national economy, and
take an active part in the all-Union socialist emulation for fulfilling
the post-war Stalin five-year plan ahead of schedule. A patriotic
movement for Stakhanovite methods of work of whole shops and factories,
for economy and socialist accumulation, over and above the plan, for
accelerated turnover of funds and for high quality was initiated in
Moscow factories and swept the country.

The Soviet people’s ardent love for their country and for the
Bolshevik Party is vividly expressed in the numerous letters sent to
Comrade Stalin reporting achievements in fulfilling the post-war
five-year plan ahead of schedule.

The names of the workers leading in fulfilment of the post-war
five-year plan are well known in our country, and women are prominent
among them. In almost all branches of industry workers followed the
patriotic examples set by the Orekhovo weaver Maria Volkova, by youth
brigade leader Anna Kuznetsova at the low-power automobile works, by
brigade leader Klavdia Zenova of the Krasny Bogatyr Plant, by Lyubov
Ananyeva, spinner at the Glukhov mills.

In 1948 new names were added to the galaxy of eminent workers of
Moscow industries. They include: Nina Vasilieva, core-maker at the
Stalin Automobile Plant, Valentina Khrisanova, brigade leader at an
electric bulb plant; Klavdia Zheltova, weaver at the Trekhgornaya
Textile Mills; Alexandra Kuzmina, motorwoman at the Krasnaya Shveya
Needlework Factory; Ludmila Nemitsheva, frame operator at the Glukhov
Cotton Mills, and many others. All these women display initiative and
resourcefulness and are outstanding organizers and innovators of
production.

Vying with the best core-makers of her shop – Alexandra Byelova,
Olga Chechetkina, and Nina Sadovskaya – the young Stakhanovite Nina
Vasilieva, of the Stalin Automobile Plant in Moscow, put out in one
shift 1,400 cores for casting the body of ZIS-150 carburetors instead
of the 228 called for by the quota. This was a splendid achievement.
The third foundry shop, where Nina Vasilieva works, completed its 1948
plan by November 28 and was named a Stakhanovite shop. Nina Vasilieva
herself completed by December 5 – Soviet Constitution Day – as much as
she was supposed to do in five and a half years.

Over one year ago Valentina Khrisanova’s youth brigade at the Moscow
Electric Bulb Factory began to work on an hour-by-hour schedule, i.e.,
planning their work and checking it by the hour. The brigade regularly
fulfills its shift assignment, putting out one hundred, two hundred and
more radio tubes. It completed the 1948 plan by September 25. Output
per worker increased almost twenty-five per cent. “We got these
results,” says Khrisanova, “without any extra expenditure, merely by
improving organization and technology. Moreover, the brigade freed a
number of workers for other jobs.”

At the Glukhov Cotton Mills, where Lyubov Ananyeva began her fine
work of tending extra spindles, a young spinning-frame operator,
Ludmila Nemitsheva, Young Communist League member, improved the
technological process and speeded up the spindles so that output
increased ten per cent. The valuable example was followed by the
spinning, flyer and twist frame operators of the Trekhgornaya Textile
Mills, Orekhovo mills, the Istomkino mills and other factories in
Moscow and all over the Soviet Union.

A new splendid movement for putting out goods of the highest
possible quality was started by Alexander Chutkikh, assistant foreman
at the Krasnokholm Worsted Goods Mill. His example was followed with
enthusiasm not only by textile workers but also by the workers in other
industries. Brigades of workingmen and working women all over the
country are vying with one another for the honour of being called
excellent quality brigades.

These achievements reflect the great strength of the collective-farm
system, the ardent patriotism of the Soviet farmers, who are working
with enthusiasm to raise the country’s agriculture to an even higher
level.

Advanced Soviet women working in factories, mills, or on
collective-farm fields are active builders of Communism. They are
helping to further the material and intellectual culture of the
U.S.S.R. And they owe all their achievements and successes to the
Bolshevik Party, to its great leaders Lenin and Stalin.

Only the socialist system could have inspired millions of women with
creative initiative, could have brought to the fore heroines of labour
– Stakhanovites in industry, transportation and agriculture,
outstanding cultural workers, Heroes of the Soviet Union and Heroes of
Socialist Labour, women Stalin Prize winners and women statesmen.

Soviet women fulfil their lofty duty of raising the younger
generation with honour and credit. They educate their children in the
spirit of selfless loyalty to the Party of Lenin and Stalin, in the
spirit of love for their country. They teach them to strive for
knowledge and to work for the benefit of their people, of Soviet
society. The Soviet Union is proud of the mothers who brought up their
sons to be fearless, valiant soldiers in the Great Patriotic War. That
war showed the whole world what a heroic generation the Bolshevik Party
has brought up – a generation that is beginning to spread its eagle
wings.

Together with the whole Soviet people the women of the Soviet Union
made an invaluable contribution to the defeat of Hitlerite Germany and
the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the fascist enslavers.
Soviet women’s selfless struggle against fascism won them the universal
respect of the freedom-loving peoples of the world. Soviet women play a
leading part in the efforts to strengthen the international movement of
democratic women of all countries, to unite their efforts for the fight
against the instigators of a new war, against imperialist reaction.

The influence of the Party of Lenin and Stalin has produced a lofty
spirit in Soviet women. Boundless love for their country, patriotic
pride in its glorious achievements, staunchness and courage,
perseverance in forging ahead towards the goal they have set
themselves, ability to surmount difficulties – all these qualities have
truly become national characteristics of Soviet women.

The hearts of patriotic Soviet women are filled with boundless love
for the Bolshevik Party. Unshakable and impressive is their faith in
the strength and truth of the Bolshevik Party, “which is the highest
expression of the moral and political unity of our people which is
confidently advancing to Communist society and which, under the
leadership of the great Stalin, is pointing out the road to universal
peace, to the abolition of bloody wars, to the overthrow of capitalist
slavery and to the great progress of nations and of all mankind.” (V.
M. Molotov)

The self-respect of Soviet people – heroes and creators of a new
life – is based on their awareness of the great advantages of the
Soviet social and state system as compared with the capitalist system,
on the knowledge that our socialist culture is superior to bourgeois
culture.

Soviet women are proud of their socialist country, which has become
a pillar of civilization and progress, of durable democratic peace
throughout the world.

They jealously guard the honour and dignity of their great country.

The work of Soviet women, their creative activity contributes to
their country’s might, adds to its prestige, to its greatness and glory.

Soviet women will continue to march in the front ranks of those who
are helping to accelerate the development of socialist economy, who are
working to fulfil the five-year plan in four years and to further
improve the material and cultural standard of the Soviet people. Deeply
conscious of their patriotic duty to their country, filled with
boundless love and gratitude to the Party of Lenin and Stalin, and to
the great leader of the peoples, Comrade Stalin, Soviet Women devote
all their energy and all their creative powers to further the
prosperity of the Soviet country, to the construction of a Communist
society in the U.S.S.R.

1) V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XIX, pp. 316-17.

2) Lenin and Stalin, Collection of Works for the Study of the History of the C.P.S.U. (B), Russ. ed., Vol. III, P. 642.

3) Domostroi
– a Russian book of the sixteenth century laying down the rules of
household management and family life for the wealthy sections of the
population. – Trans.